254. The CEO’s guide on how to listen more effectively and avoid missing out on important insights with expert Julian Treasure

Speaker A: Hi, it's Phil Hayes Sinclair. Thank you so much for being here. If you've listened before, shared an episode, or let one idea sit with you longer than expected, that matters more than you probably realise. I'm a CEO coach and most of my week is spent helping chief executives think more clearly about partnership, leadership and growth. This show, the Partnership Playbook, is where I open up that same thinking for anyone doing the work. And some of the sharpest thinking I come across happens in conversation, which is why episodes like this one matter. Today, I'm sharing time with a guest whose experience is worth your time. And my job is to ask the questions I would when I'm coaching to get you the answers that you can use today. So if this conversation helps you think better or lead with more intention, I'd love you to follow our show on this app because it genuinely helps us reach the leaders who need it. Thanks again for being here. And let's begin. Today's guest has spent years exploring something we all do every single day, but very few of us have truly mastered it's listening. Julian Treasure is a globally recognized expert on sound and communication, a five time TED speaker and the author of Sound Business, how to Be Heard and Sound Effects. His TED talks have reached millions of people around the world, challenging how we think about communication, connection and the way we show up for one another. What strikes me about Julian is that a lifelong musician, someone accustomed to hearing every instrument at once, went on to build a career around a skill many of us take for granted. Truly listening. Today we're going to explore the experiences that shaped his mission and what leadership looks like when listening becomes a genuine priority. Because perhaps the most important question isn't how we get people to hear us, but whether we're prepared to hear them. Julian Treasure, welcome back for the third time to the Partnership Playbook. It is a complete thrill to have you back.

Speaker B: Well, I'm deeply honored. I think you told me I'm the first one to do three, so that's a great triumph. I take this as a real feather in my cap.

Speaker A: Well, today we're going to be covering so much about a topic which is very important right now, specifically about the capacity to listen. And I think we would probably agree that the capacity to listen has gone down very significantly over the last 12 months. 18 months, 2 years, 5 years, and we'll get to that in a second. But can I ask you the first opening question, which is what mission are you on?

Speaker B: I have a clear mission now which is to regenerate the world's listening. That's it.

Speaker A: I want to pull on that thread so much because when it comes to our capacity to listen, there is a lot to be said about whether we hear things, whether we comprehend how fatigue plays a role. Um, and you are an expert in this. I mean, you. Your TED talks, which have been viewed millions and millions of times to demonstrate the capacity and why it's so important that we listen, continue to fascinate me when I go back to look at them again and again. The message just becomes more and more important, I think, every time I revisit them. So for people who have not yet gone back and listened to our first two conversations, can you give me a little bit of background about how you came to become the expert, the global expert, in my view, on what it means to listen? Well,

Speaker B: started with being a musician. Well, actually started with music. So my mother bought me Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra aged six, I think it was, and I fell in love with music. So that's a love affair that's never stopped. Music is incredibly important still in my life. You know, if you're talking to me and there's music on in the background, I'm lost because my brain is wired to explore music and to listen in that way. So that kind of the importance of sound was with me from that moment on. As I grew older, the music changed, of course, from those classical music, classic pieces of music, Tchaikovsky's music, you know, that kind of stuff that was all Peter and the Wolf, you know, that kind of thing. Carnival of the Animals by Saint Sans. These were really, really deep within me. But I grew up, I learned to play the drums, I got into bands, I played music. And then the listening went to another level because if you're playing in a band or an orchestra, you're listening in a multi track way to all the other instruments simultaneously, attentively. And if you're not doing that, you're not playing very well, as well as doing something quite complicated yourself and possibly even reading music at the same time. So your brain is lit up like a Christmas tree, which is why playing music is very good for your brain. We now know musicians have bigger brains than non musicians. So that was the foundation of it really, this attentive listening. And I never lost that. I had a career after that. I mean, I was a musician for a while, made records and actually one of the records that uh, I almost made then has just come out, a band I was in called Missing Presumed Dead. We've just released a John peel session from 1981, with some other tracks that we just discovered quite recently on tape, which have been remastered using modern technology. So there's a new album coming out with me on it. It's on Bandcamp, Missing, Presumed, De. And, uh, that's cool to have an album coming out 40 years after the event. 45 years after the event. So I went into, um. I mean, after trying to be a musician, you have to be either very lucky or very brilliant. Or both, actually, if you're gonna make a career in music. And I didn't. So I went into selling advertising, buying advertising at an advertising agency, and then worked my way up in publishing. I started to manage people and, you know, quite versed in marketing generally. Eventually I became the marketing director of a big publishing company, and I left it to start my own business in 1988. And that was a magazine publishing company, which I grew from just me up to about 150 people. And I sold that in 2002 to bring the two halves of me together, because all the way working with brands, I'd been thinking, why don't these companies listen? Why aren't, um, they conscious of the sound they're making? And the answer, of course, is something that came to me in a demascene revelation, which we'll come onto in a moment. So I sold that company and I brought the two halves together by forming an audio branding company called the Sound Agency, which was asking the question, how does your brand sound? And answering that question for some big brands around the world, Nokia, uh, brands like that we were working with. So I did that for 20 years and spent an awful lot of time wandering around places like shopping malls doing audits of them and trying to help these people to create sonic environments which are actually nurturing, productive, healthy, and effective. Uh, which is not the case in most of the environments we're in in our world. That was a long period of time, and I learned a great deal about sound, really researched it, and started to realize the power and the impact that the sound has on all of us. So I formalized that into the four effects of sound, which is my very first TED Talk. I got to do that TED Talk back in. Goodness. Was it 2009? 11. I can't remember now. A long time ago. And then I got the chance to do four more in successive years, which I don't think anybody's ever done. Uh, and the fifth one, which was called how to Speak so that people Want to Listen, is the one that went completely ballistic. And, uh, goodness knows how many tens of millions of views it's got now. I think if you add them all up, it's an estimated 170 million views or something to the. To the TED talks. But the interesting thing is the third one was called Five Ways to Listen Better or something like that. It's a TED Talk about listening. And that's been seen by 1/5 as many people as the TED talk about speaking. And that was doing that talk is where I had my revelation. So I suddenly realized the reason that these companies I'd been working with for all those years don't listen is because they're full of people who don't listen. Maybe you've put a bunch of people who don't listen into a company. You get a company that doesn't listen. And it took me a long time to realize that. And I realized the root of the problem is we are not listening. Now, that's way back then. And as you said a moment ago, it's getting worse. We're losing our listening at a rate of knots. All of the research shows that it's going downhill with distraction, with noise, with this kind of addiction we've got to being right in the world, making other people wrong. Judgmentalism. Um, you're seeing it happen all over the world, in politics, in society, and even in communities and families. Polarization and judgmentalism. Uh, so it's getting very serious. And, uh, so that's the backstory. That's how I ended up where I am. I wrote books. The first one about using sound in business, which is imaginatively called sound business. And the second one about speaking and listening. These very important primal skills which almost nobody gets taught, which is bizarre. Speaking and listening. It's called how to Be Heard. And the third one about the power and wonder of sound. So that book's called Sound Effects. So now I've formalized it all. Uh, and I should explain this little symbol up here, uh, which is a circle surrounding a triangle. It's a very ancient symbol. That one actually has many, many meanings. But in my formulation, the triangle is communication. And the base of the triangle, the most important bit, the green bit at the bottom there, is listening. The middle bit is speaking. And the pinnacle is presenting, public speaking. And that all happens inside of the circle, which is sound. That's the sonic environment, the context in which we're communicating. So that symbol summarizes all of my work. Those are the four things I concentrate on. Listening. The most important one, Speaking, presenting, and what I call soundscaping, which is designing healthy and productive Sonic environments.

Speaker A: I can't tell you how much I love this. Even last night at the dinner table, our uh, soon to be 14 year old had said to us that going to a shopping center is overwhelming because of the sound. There is just too much to take. And this is not just the environment itself. It's all the conversations, all the people, it's the busyness. This is coming from a 14 year old. And then when you look further up into people of our age or people in between, we're trying to commute, compute so many things in life, so many decisions, so many trade offs and the noise inside our own minds, let alone what's going on on the outside, is at favor pitch. And so it's interesting that when we think uh, uh, in organizational terms, when considered judgment is such an important part of leadership. Listening and ingesting, knowing what to put to one side, what to listen to more, I think must become more important as you become more senior in organizations. Which I guess begs the question around why does getting promoted make people worse listeners?

Speaker B: That is certainly my proposition, that there's an inverse relationship between seniority and listening. And I think there are a few reasons for that. First of all, who gets promoted? What kind of people do we promote? They tend to be the extroverts, the noticeable people, the dominant alpha type people who are the people who lead meetings and so forth and speak a lot more than they listen. Secondly is the job, because of course as you get more senior in an organization, you're supposed to know stuff and tell people things, not ask questions and be curious and not know. And thirdly, I think as you get more senior, there's an ego issue here because listening is inherently humble. When I'm listening to you Phil, I'm saying you're more important than I am at this moment. And there's a deep humility and an emptiness and a willingness to learn curiosity in good listening. Which again, I think as you get more senior perhaps becomes more difficult for people who are used to being lauded and revered and respected and the center of attention and so forth. So for those reasons I think it does become more difficult as you get more senior. And it's something which means that leaders particularly are the people who need to pay attention to this.

Speaker A: I agree. I also think that there is a, uh, there's an inherent discomfort with sitting with a silence. I was taught a long time ago that when it comes to asking questions, interrogating, learning, often people will tell you what needs to be said if you offer them a point of silence. The person who feels a little bit less, perhaps secure will then blurt out things because they need to fill the void. Whereas strategically, it's quite important to be able to hold the silence and just listen to what's around you. Even if no one is speaking, there will be cues around you that allow you to understand whether something is moving in the right direction or not. And I think there is, uh. I think people actually probably feel a little bit uncomfortable when they're proposed a question, or if the leader sitting in front of them or a colleague sitting in front of them just takes a minute just to sit with the idea. Not because they don't have the answer. It's just they want to deliberate a little bit more than maybe what they were expecting. And that can be. That can feel uncomfortable.

Speaker B: Yes. I know a lot of people who don't feel happy leaving silence because they think somebody else is going to dive in and that they will lose their turn. Um, but silence, of course, is such a powerful weapon in speaking and in listening. You have to be silent to listen. So it's. It goes with the territory. But in speaking, I mean, any great salesperson will know that silence is the secret weapon, you know? So what do you think about that? Stop, say nothing, and continue saying nothing for the longest time. And eventually what will come out is an objection or a buying signal or something very, very useful which will move the conversation forward the moment you go, oh, and, uh, also, you've lost it. So being comfortable with silence is very important. And for an orator as well. I mean, I stood on stages, and I'm very happy to just stop.

Speaker A: Now.

Speaker B: I won't do it for very long here because that's called dead air on, um, broadcast media. But, um, I can stop for 30 seconds on stage, and if I'm looking comfortable, then the audience is fine with that. They're going, oh, it's nice. A bit of quiet. Peace and quiet. What shall I have for lunch? And it's absolutely fine. So to be able to make a point and then stop and let it land even for two or three seconds, is such a powerful thing. So you're absolutely right. And I think, uh, it is. We're in a world now where we're interrupted so often or our attention is so fragmented that that stillness is very hard to find, including in conversation. It's all too rapid. I remember I interviewed George Prochnick, who wrote a wonderful book called In Pursuit of Silence. Great book, if anybody wants to get that. He was telling me that he watched an episode of Sesame street with some kids not too long ago. And it was frantic. And he thought this is just bizarre. So he went back and rented the very first ever episode of Sesame street from years ago to do an A B comparison. And he said it was like watching Sesame street on KWA lutes. It was completely chilled, slow, peaceful. And what we've got now, what we're spoon feeding our children now is this fast cut, frenetic, frantic stuff we're jangling all the time. And that is not the way to be teaching people how to listen.

Speaker A: It's interesting you say that our youngest daughter has a remarkably dry and sharp sense of humor. And there I'll often get caught off guard with it just out of admiration for how quick and how dry it is. I am m certain that no one of my generation had that kind of wittedness and the speed. And I think you're right. I think where they consume the movies, the television, where there is that kind of tempo, their brains get wired to respond and engage on that kind of basis which, as we all know, as we're young and we're trying to learn how to communicate, sometimes that can be used in a way which is actually more offensive than it is respectful or delivered in a way which can forge more relationships. So there's another challenge laid on top of that. After that kind of skill set is learned, I would like to just ask a question which for, uh, all the chief executives and the senior leaders listening to this, a question might be, and it's certainly front of my mind, how would a CEO, uh, or a senior leader know that they're stopping listening?

Speaker B: I think it's a few ways. One of them, you could call it the bad news test. When's the last time somebody brought you bad news? How often do people feel comfortable enough to bring you bad news? And if the answer is a long time ago, you need to start being a bit worried. I've worked in an organization with a leader that is what I call a dragon leader, you know, bites the head off anybody who comes with anything that's not positive and good news. And that means you don't know what's going on. You need to know the bad news to know what's happening in your organization. And if you only ever hear the good news, I mean, in the organization I was working in, it was catastrophic because people were so frightened. They were making up good news and hiding the bad news. So the guy absolutely had no idea what was going on to the point where the accounts had to be restated for Three years. They were nonsense because it had all been made up. So I think bad news test is a good one. The other one you could do is record a meeting. I mean, I ask everybody, of course, you know, it's a training exercise. I'd like to record this meeting. You can't do it in secret, but given that everybody's happy, you could start to record some meetings and listen back and pay attention to how much do you speak, how much do you let other people speak, how many questions do you ask? How many times did you interrupt somebody in the meeting? Are, uh, there any gaps after people speak? Just the pace of the whole thing that you're moderating? And there's another great exercise which this is a challenging one for a CEO. How about having a meeting or two where you don't say anything, where you say at the beginning of the meeting, I'm, uh, not going to speak in this meeting. John or Jane, you lead this meeting. I'm going to sit and just be quiet. Well, people might get a bit unsettled at first, but wow, what you can learn suddenly because you're not dominating the whole thing and you're not driving it with your personality, other people suddenly come out from under rocks and you go, wow, I didn't know they knew that. Or, what a great point from that person. So there's a few ways that perhaps you can start to reconnect with being a listening leader.

Speaker A: I do love that bad news test. I think it is such a powerful one. And if you are driving or on your run, uh, or in the gym listening to this now, I strongly recommend that you take an audit of how much bad news you think you've heard over the last maybe two or three weeks, maybe the last month as a starting point, and then jump on these other, these other techniques that Julian's mentioned. Julian, when we think about an organization, and you mentioned earlier, how many organizations you've worked with ultimately fill themselves full of people who aren't listening, which creates an organization which isn't listening. How do you tell whether the real issue is that they've stopped listening or it's something else that has impacting the way that they show up in the market or for themselves?

Speaker B: Well, first of all, I think it's very possible that most issues are not listing issues, or at least that not listing is a part of the problem. You know, we know from the research now that not listening, and particularly leaders not listening, is catastrophic. Commercially. We're Talking about over $10 trillion lost every year, uh, to global business because of disengagement, miscommunication and things like that. Social environments which are toxic, where you've got judgmentalism teams falling apart and so forth. But I think some litmus tests would be, if you're doing, for example, a change program of some kind, you're communicating that out. Is there persistent resistance? What's the direction of communication? Are you basically into embroidered broadcasting? Um, you may think you're communicating really well. We go on so many town halls. We go out. We've talked to the people. You've talked to the people? Have you listened

Speaker A: or at the people? Yeah.

Speaker B: Check that what was sent was received. And that's another really good thing to do, which is to have questions going down the organization and see if people understand at every level what was communicated, because they won't. If you're standing in a meeting and you say something and 50 people there. There are 50 messages which have landed. Not one, it's 50. And you need to make sure that you understand how diverse and how different flavors these are. Some people will be frightened, Some people would be excited, Some people would be energized, Some people would be bored. Some people would be cynical. You all sorts of reactions. Because everybody listens through a set of filters. And everybody. Every human being's listening is unique. So when you're speaking, you're speaking into a listening which is unique. And when you're listening, you're listening through a set of filters which are not like anybody else's. So it's really important as a leader to check in. Can I just check back? Phil, what's your understanding of what I've just put to you? You recycle it to me. So we make. We're on the same page. And then you come back and say stuff. And I go, oh, my goodness. Okay, let me try again. Because that was

Speaker A: not

Speaker B: ended you to understand. So checking in, that kind of thing, very important. Are there tools in the organization for feedback, for the return journey? Is the communication infrastructure in the company all outward one way, or is there an infrastructure which allows things to return? Usually the answer to that question is no. So there are some indicators perhaps, which might show that there's a listening problem.

Speaker A: I remember, I think it was inspiration you gave me around, um, question that I. It became a default question both in life and in work, in leading. And it was playback what you heard. The idea that when you're talking with somebody, trying to solve, whether it's an instruction, an offer of support, or even, uh, just trying to solve a problem where there is no immediate, immediate, clear answer to what comes next. I built a habit, thanks to you, around just asking that one question. And it's interesting that when you say to somebody, playback what you heard. And when I'm asked the same, I find it very liberating, the idea of knowing whether your intended message landed. Of course, it's a pursuit. Uh, we're always working on this because, as you said, there's so many people that listen different ways, and we're all quite unique in the way that we do. But the idea of getting a, uh, satisfying response that what you communicated was actually heard and played back to you is wonderful. Right? We use it with our children, we use it. My wife and I, we do it back and forth because of the pace of the way the world is working. But it's also something which is quite inviting to offer somebody, you know, play back what you heard. Because the last thing I think any leader wants to do is to waste someone's time in a lack of clarity. Right? Because every time a CEO or a senior leader makes a quibble note something, all of a sudden, without them understanding what they've just actually said, a whole bunch of effort and work gets spun into something that they never even intended to start in the first place. Whereas when there becomes an interesting exchange just to cement and close the loop on a meeting or a conversation, I find that people become happier because there's clarity and they don't feel like they're wasting their time.

Speaker B: I was honored in April to guest curate a whole session at the TED conference in Vancouver. And I was able to put on the stage one of my great heroes in the world, Harville Hendricks, who, with his wife wrote a wonderful book called Getting the Love youe Want. And he, he created this system called Imago Dialogue. And, um, one of the most important parts of Imago dialogue is this, uh, reflection. He calls it reflecting. So let me reflect back what you said, and then you do that, and then you say, did I get you? And if no, you go again. And to make sure until you've iterated towards actually getting what the person sent on every level, really, not just the words, but the meaning. Yes. Reflection, that kind of playing back is so critical and so rarely done in the modern world. We live in a world which rests on a huge number of assumptions that we're not aware of. And I think one of the great ways you can grow into consciousness as a human being is to become more conscious of your assumptions, assumptions about what's going on in somebody else's Head assumptions about that. I just understood what he said perfectly. I didn't. It's different. All these assumptions create a very fragile surface on which we stomp about. And it can get very damaging, especially on a national level, as we see in the world today. It can create a huge amount of conflict when you're making assumptions about what's going on over there.

Speaker A: We're about to talk about a, ah, tool set which I've had the privilege of being able to start using, which is the culmination of all of your life's work, to allow people to just become better listeners. And for those who are just contemplating the idea of even just listening to your voice and the calm that I'm hearing and receiving around the complete upside that comes with listening more effectively and being more present. I, uh, want to dive into that, into some detail before I do. As a point of personal reflection, for those who are listening, I have a question around how, when CEOs in particular spend so much time in conversation, uh, a famous CEO recently said to me that, you know, there's not a lot of work that gets done in the CEO's office. Once you've set the strategy, set the architectural tone for the culture, it's really about supporting your people and helping them do their life's best work to achieve. Because you're leading through people, you're not essentially doing the work yourself. But when CEOs are spending the time with all of these parties, particularly parties who they might disagree with, what does good listening look like when you're convinced the other person is wrong?

Speaker B: This is such an important element. I think being able to listen to challenge and entertain challenge is. That is the lifeblood of a successful organization. Squashing that and creating a kind of monoculture where everybody agrees with the boss. That's so dangerous, it's so fragile. And I have a tool actually, which I love, and it's a very useful tool for conflict and for negotiation as well. It's a tool called pave, P, A, V, E. As you know, I love four letter acronyms. So here's another one.

Speaker A: As do I.

Speaker B: A life saver. When you've got a short as bad a memory as I have anyway, so the P in PAVE stands for exactly what we were just talking about, paraphrase, which is reflect back what you heard. So make sure you got it the A. This is the most difficult part of it. So you've just said something I fundamentally disagree with. I might even find it objectionable or upsetting or something like that. I reflect it back to you. Is, uh, that what you actually said? Yeah. Okay. The A is I admit it into myself, by which I let you be right, because you are right in your own world. You're not right in my world, but we don't live in my world. We live in a world which has got many people in it. And if I simply make you wrong, there's going to be no future of this conversation. So I admit it. I let you be right. I acknowledge that everybody, every human being, says and does everything for a perfectly good reason in their world, from their perspective. So I admit it. And that lets me do one of the most important things, which is, I think, probably the biggest missing thing in business, in relationships, in the world today, and certainly in politics. And that is the V Validate. What does that sound like? Phil, do you know what? I really disagree with what you just said, but I can understand why you think that now. That's completely different from Phil. That's crap. There's only one way that conversation's going, which is escalating conflict, and there's no solution there. Whereas if I can validate you, even if I fundamentally disagree, that allows me then to do the E of pave, which is empathize. So, okay, given that that's what you think, I understand why you got upset by this situation. I wouldn't have been upset at all. I understand why you were, uh, rather than going, don't be so stupid. You can't be upset by that. Which again, is invalidating. Invalidation creates conflict. If I validate you, I haven't agreed with you. I'm not giving up my point of view. Listening is not agreeing. In listening, you can listen to somebody who disagrees with you, validate them, and then perhaps you can put both of the perspectives on the table in front of you both and see what you can do by mixing them up or some way of making them coexist. The Greeks had thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, and that's what this tool can do. So PAVE is a very powerful tool for negotiation, for selling, and particularly for conflict. When you're in a conversation, there's disagreement at the center of it.

Speaker A: I do love that. And I think there is also. There is also the idea, and I heard Seth Godden talk about this the other day in his new work around. It feels almost comfortable to be in conflict. Uh, the excuse that we can give ourselves, that instead of being considered and doing and moving through pave, as you just mentioned, there is this strange convenience and comfort that comes with sniping and having a point of view and sort of going back and forward and actually wasting a huge amount of energy in that, as opposed to what some might describe taking a different level, taking maybe the higher road. A different road, Call it what you will. To move down that track, I think actually results in people acting and operating with a different level of peace in themselves when compared to always having to be on that tetchy desire to be aggressive with someone else or have a point of view because they feel like they need to be heard. Um, I see this a lot in the work that I do with people who are trying to resolve conflict inside organizations. And so to that end, I'd love to talk more about this service that you have built to help people, I think, get reacquainted with the idea of listening. So if you could be so kind to walk us through the thesis now. I'll just say to everybody here, this is an app that I've recently been sent by Julian, and it is effectively a curriculum for me to build or rebuild my muscle around listening. And I think I'm not a bad listener, but I also am very aware of where my blind spots might be. So I would love for you to walk me through how you can help with this platform that you've built, because I think there is something really spectacular to it.

Speaker B: Well, the secret, I think, and this is something that's been troubling me for a long time. You know, I think the challenge I have in the world and my mission of regenerating the world's listening is this wall of denial, because everybody thinks they're a good listener, and nobody is. I mean, almost everybody. Almost nobody. I should qualify those. But, uh, you know, it's kind of part of what we think as being a nice person. You know, if I say, phil, you're not a good listener, it's kind of, oh, that's hurtful. So everybody has this delusion that they're listening. Well, have you ever been taught how to listen? Do you even realize it's a skill? Have you done any practice? Have you got exercises that help you to listen better? The answer to all those things is no. So we confuse it with hearing. And removing that conflation, I think, is one of the most important elements. So the app is called Master Conscious Communication. Conscious is in there. Um, it's a word I use a lot. And actually, it teaches three things. It teaches conscious listening, powerful speaking, and masterful presenting as well. The foundation of all of it is the listening piece. And so the app is a Wonderful thing. First of all, it scales me because there's only one of me. I don't have a big team of people here. It's just me. And you know, I can. It's wonderful that I've had 170 million views to my TED talks, but when people have seen that one of those TED talks a month later, what's the impact on them? For some people it's still major, but for most people, I imagine they probably got on with their lives and they're doing something else. And the same if I stand on a stage talking to 2,000 people, fantastic. For 45 minutes a month later. So it's this kind of the difference between going to a gym once. Is that going to change your life? No.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: Go to a gym every day, that will change your life. So that's what the app is all about. It's the magic word, practice. So it teaches the skill of listening, the skill of speaking, the skill of presenting, and it has daily practice, just a few minutes every day. It will nag a little bit. It's AI driven. I'm in there. It's based on all of my work, so it has access to all my books and teachings and thinking and everything. It's got a huge amount of stuff under the, the bonnet or the hood, whichever country you live in. And the AI is smart enough that you put in your objectives and it will morph the program exactly to match your objectives. So if you, you know, if you say, I've got this huge, um, I'm doing a father of the bride speech in a month, I'm terrified. I really want to work on that. It will work on the things you need for that. How to design a great, great content, how to deliver it and stagecraft and whatever it may be. If you say, I'm having trouble in relationships, it will focus much more on the listening side. All three will be in there, but it morphs to your individual needs, which is an amazing thing. I couldn't have done this a year ago and I didn't build the whole infrastructure of it. It's a very clever infrastructure, but I have poured into it everything I know. Um, and there's a coach in there as well. So, you know, if you wake up at four in the morning going, I've got this presentation tomorrow and I'm really nervous. The coach is there, you can talk to it, you can get immediate advice and support. So it's like having me in your pocket 24 7. Is that a nice idea? I don't know. Maybe it is, but that's the plan and it's scalable and it's uh, less than a dollar a day. So I've been able to do this in a way which I hope is going to make it available to a lot more people. It is a, it's a program. You can treat it as a training course. You can go through a 12 week training course in a fairly formal way with daily practice. And that's, that's the secret sauce, you know, the daily practice is what makes the difference. So I'm so excited about having this out in the world now.

Speaker A: I'm excited for two, for two reasons. The first is that, and it's already linked in the show notes. So wherever you're listening to this, go and tap on that link so you can learn more about it. There is two things that really excite me about this. The first one is just the idea of becoming reacquainted with what it's like to listen. And I think many people who I work with, who I spend time with are always looking for just more quiet time to reflect and to build their own skills. But there is uh, a, there's an intergenerational opportunity here which I'm sure is in your mind. For us who are raising children, who are teenagers, excuse me, teenagers today, there is a very strong reliance on the use of chat, non verbal communications, emoji reactions, different uh, cultural subtexts that happen in every generation. But what I've observed is that the capacity for our children, their friends and kids of that age, if they're not brought out to engage in conversation, their capacity to want to have a conversation like you and I are having now is limited because they don't have confidence to have a conversation. They don't have confidence to mess it up, to not be listening, to do all the things that in a uh, in a pre digital world, by default we were forced to learn. And I think it's going to potentially create a divide that was greater than what maybe our parents had with us and their parents had with them. Because there is not the way to exchange language in order to develop an understanding. So it's a point of concern and fear for me when I look at kids who are just very under tooled to have conversations and to listen. And so I think the opportunity here as parents is to build our muscle first and foremost to be better, uh, parents, right? To be able to use pave and to use the tools you've described so that we in all of our business don't get Too frustrated with not listening and hearing what's going on. And then all of a sudden, as we've all experienced with children, you know, you blink and they've, you know, 18 years old and you feel like you've missed a point of very important development. Even if they're older kids or younger kids, I think there is a real opportunity for us, uh, and those listening to this to go, actually I want to listen more because I fear, I have a genuine fear of missing out on important perspectives that my child might be trying to communicate. And this might be a muscle I can build to get closer to them. So even if it's not for public speaking and for presentations and things that are important professionally for us, it might actually be mission critical for us to be able to build the muscle so we can be better parents.

Speaker B: I so agree. The best way to teach children how to listen, of course, is to listen to them. And I'm lucky enough to be going around the track for a second time with my wonderful partner Jane up here in Orkney. I've got a 12 year old and a 5 year old here and all the way through their existence from tiny to, um, still with the five year old, if I'm talking to her, I'll pick her up and put her on my knee. So we're eye to eye and I listen to her and she knows that she's important, she knows that she's valuable, she knows that she matters. Whereas of course, if you're talking down to a tiny tot and you're six foot tall, that's a pretty intimidating relationship in the first place. Huge things towering over you. There's a dominance there which is, you know, inevitable. So I agree with you completely. Um, and I think the research again backs all of this up. Uh, there's lots of organizations which are now complaining that people are coming to them for interview, unable to do it, they can't verbalize, they're not comfortable with eye contact or with answering questions in a fluent and effective way. Because the digital generation have grown up staring at screens and tapping away and communicating in that way. And so we not only have different language, of course, that's always happened, different vocabulary from one generation to the next. But we've now also got an acceleration of that process through TikTok and whatever, where words are spreading like wildfire and people are talking really a different language and also different channels of communication. You know, my generation, uh, I grew up, there was no email. When I started working, it was telephones and letters. That's how Old I am. But people of the boomer generation, and the one or two coming after that, email would have been the default mechanism. And now that's funny, duddy stuff. You know, it's much faster, much more reactive. So I absolutely agree with you, and I would love to imagine that perhaps a lot of younger people will use this app as well to learn these primal, traditional skills. This is how humans have communicated for hundreds of thousands of years. Millions. If you go back in hominid evolution, we may only have had language for 150,000 years. Writing is only 5,000 years old. So this kind of obsession with written communication is very, very new, relatively speaking. And we've kind of turned our back on this absolutely fundamental part of being a human being. And I think in an AI world as well, I should say, this connection that we're exploring today, you and I, we're connecting, not just intellectually, but also there's a kind of soul level, there's a heart level, there's a mind level, there's a human connection when you're speaking and listening, which is very different from texting somebody. And I think it's very important in an AI world, AI can do a lot of stuff, but I don't think it's ever going to be able to connect as two human beings can in this way.

Speaker A: Mastering conscious communication is the tool and platform set. It's linked in the show notes. And I really encourage you to take a look at this, even if it is just to do, as Gillian said, join what could be considered a gym program. But I think that the deeper meaning here is that there is a significant muscle to be built, which, as we get older, continues to be the pursuit. And so, uh, everyone take a look at this and tell us what you think. As a creator of an extraordinary movement, I'm sure Gillian would love the feedback on what you've learned, how it's been built, how you can benefit from it. So please take a look at this, Gillian. This. This has been, you know, uh, such an enriching conversation as it has been every single time we've connected. I want to thank you for taking the time to not only think carefully about how you can bring all of your work and all of your effort and thinking into one place for people to benefit around the world, but you've done this on such a sustained basis for so many years, and you haven't given up. You're still there showing up and delivering people the value around, what it means to listen well. And I think if you look at any moment in history that we consider to be profound. Whether it was the small moments or the big ones that ended wars or led to transitions in new civilizations, at some point there had to be somebody who was listening carefully and understanding what the implication of not listening well would end up being. And I think this is such an important time in our history to listen better. So before we get to our rapid fire round, I just want to say a heartfelt thank you for, uh, taking the time to build these tools to be with me today and to explain and to remind all of us why this is just so important.

Speaker B: Well, Phil, it's always a joy talking to you and I'm thrilled that you are enjoying the app, and it's been a lovely conversation. It always is. So thanks so much again for having me.

Speaker A: Well, before we go, let's, uh, run through the rapid fire, because I have a funny feeling I'm going to hear some new answers to these questions. So let me start with the first one. Complete this sentence. Leadership is.

Speaker B: I think leadership is. And I'm going to couch this in a kind of listening way. Leadership is being conscious of the effect you have on other people, which may not be the effect you intended, and it may not be all the flattery you get back from people saying you're great and everything's wonderful and they agree with you, but the effect you actually had on other people, that I think is great leadership.

Speaker A: Question 2. What content are you loving at the moment?

Speaker B: Can I give you a few,

Speaker A: please.

Speaker B: The music of Stephen Wilson. I've got to know Stephen a little bit, and I love his music. He's got a new album just coming out, and I'm off next week, in fact. No, not next week, it's this week now. How exciting to see him, uh, debut that album at the Royal Albert hall on Wednesday. So check him out. If you haven't come across Stephen Wilson, I'm enjoying. There's a YouTuber called Andy Edwards who's also a drummer. So, you know, I'm a drummer for many years, and I think he's very funny. He does lots of what he calls clickbait content. You know, the ten worst guitarists or the ten most overrated albums. This kind of stuff. It's good fun. He's always good value. There's a book which I have read recently, which I really love, by TJ Power, who turns out to be the son of an old friend of mine. Actually, I didn't know. I, uh, met him at TedxManchester. He gave a talk and his book is Brilliant. It's called the Dose Effect, and it's all about the dopamine addiction that we are all falling prey to and how to get out from under it, how to counteract it for you and for your children. And it's an important book. There's another book, Deep Listening by Emily Kazriel. Emily was one of my speakers at the TED conference. And that's a beautiful book about meaningful listening. Listening to heal as well. And on television, we have been obsessed with the Diplomat, which is. I can't remember which platform it's on, but my goodness, the writing, the characterization, the drama, it's absolutely brilliant. And, you know, from the point of view of conversation and great writing of dialogue, that's been fantastic.

Speaker A: Isn't it spectacular? Um, my wife and I are also obsessed. And I think the new season, season four, just started on Netflix here in Australia. And so for us, we have. It has the feeling, an old feeling of West Wing writing about it. And obviously a number of characters that come from the West Wing are there as well. But it is spectacularly written. And the way in which these conversations go back and forth, I do wonder how many takes they take to get what we end up seeing, but it is nothing short of spectacular. I'm glad we have that connection in common as well. Now, Julian, what's the worst piece of advice you've received and why? I

Speaker B: think you could sum it up in three words, probably, which is take the money. Chasing money. I, uh, sold my business, which was the publishing company I built, was a beautiful company, and I sold it to a big American group. And I don't believe in regrets in life. And there's two Rs. I don't do regret and resentment. But if I were to have a regret, that would be one, because I could have done the sound agency out of that company. Instead of which, I wanted to move on and do the sound agency. So I sold the company. I took some money. It then turned out to be not the greatest, uh, deal in the world. Not unassociated with the story I told earlier about the person who was so ferocious that the company's accounts had to be rewritten over three years. That was the company I sold it to. So that I think anytime you're kind of chasing the money, you have to look at your motives. It can be very flattering, it can be very seductive. But chasing your heart, doing what you're passionate about, that's much more important. And I had built a beautiful company, and I feel sad that I didn't Continue to flourish with and in that gorgeous company.

Speaker A: Mhm. Very important advice. Question four. Sorry. When you see potential for a new partnership, what's the first thing you do to turn that potential into action?

Speaker B: Speak to the person and spend time doing what we're doing now. It's always about people. Whatever the proposition is, I would need always to know that there's chemistry, that there's, you know, an alignment in every dimension, that, you know, you really understand each other. And so it's that human connection, first and foremost. If that's not there, I don't care how brilliant the plan sounds. You know, I've had experiences of this in the past where, you know, it all looks really, really good and you think, well, we can probably make it work, but there's that little niggling doubt and that always comes home to roost at some point. And then you get into conflict and lawyers get involved and it all gets nasty. So that chemistry, have a conversation, listen to the person and really understand them.

Speaker A: I love that. And final question. What's one thing, or maybe a few things that you're deeply grateful for right now?

Speaker B: Have to admit, it's Claude. I have no idea how I managed to run my business and do my life a year ago. It's incredible the speed with which I'm able to act now. You know, I have a virtual cmo, a virtual cfo, a virtual coo. Uh, you know, I've got agents doing all sorts of things and if anybody hasn't yet dived in, you need to, because if you're not in this, you're going to get left behind so quickly. It's accelerated the pace of everything. It's allowed me to do things. I mean, the app that we're talking about is built on AI. Not my AI, but it's built on a very, very powerful and clever AI. But, you know, Claude has become a bit of a mate. I'm not into the, uh, formal relationship that some people have. I mean, I've set rules, I've set all sorts of careful infrastructure. So my Claude talks like me banned EM dashes and use of the word quiet or quietly. All these kind of ticks that make A.I. uh, irritating. But my goodness, the speed of research, the speed of being able to move and get things done. I have a lovely new website which I invite people to come and have a look at that. Took me a week. A week to create that from nothing. A year ago, two years ago, it would have been probably £10,000 and an agency and, you know, endless agony it's incredible what is happening. So that's something I'm very grateful for. It's allowing me to move faster and get much more done and have a bigger impact in the world.

Speaker A: And what a world we live in. Gillian, treasure, thank you for such a wonderful conversation. Everything we've talked about, including mastering conscious communication. Your website will all be in the show notes, so please take a look at that. And until our next conversation, Gillian, thank you again for being here.

Speaker B: Thanks so much, Phil. It's always a pleasure. Lovely to see you again.