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“Just Listen” – Chapter 1: Who’s Holding You Hostage? (click here for PDF)

I am a founding member of the “dread going/glad I went” club for the socially shy.

I am also a Role Specific Extrovert. That means that when the occasion calls for me to be “out there” I strap on some courage and give it my best shot, but it doesn’t come naturally.

Despite all the writing, speaking and networking I do, I am quite shy. One of the reasons I push myself to be “out there” is that I think if I stopped all such activities for three months, I would revert back to the introvert that still lives within. And that is a part of my personality that I don’t want to control me.

Why am I confessing this? A couple reasons. First, the holidays are upon me (and you) and that means, putting on my game face a lot more often than usual. Second, I know that you feel exactly the same and I wanted you to know that you’re not alone.

I discovered years ago something that helped me that I hope will help you. I call it FTD Delivery*, but it’s not about flowers. I had this habit of going to parties and staring at the onion dip until it turned brown and then I would nag my wife for us to leave. Then one day I said to myself, “Enough of this cowardice, I am going to tonight’s party and by the end of it I will have spoken to three people I don’t know and they’ll be glad we met.”

By the end of the evening I had spoken to five people I didn’t know and three of them took my hand with both of their hands, looked me in the eye and said, “It was really great meeting you, perhaps we can follow up.”

After I left I asked myself what on Earth I had done.

Then I realized that I had followed the advice, “Be More Interested than Interesting” that I heard from my mentor and leadership guru Warren Bennis. I also know from Tell to Win author, Peter Guber, that when you ask people to tell you a story, which he calls “emotional transportation,” they relax and enjoy the experience and are often grateful to you for giving them the gift of your interest. Then I asked all of them three kinds of questions about those stories. The questions caused them to respond with either: “I felt this,” “I thought that,” “I did this.” Asking them questions which elicited such responses caused each of these people to feel I was interested in them (which I was), but more than that, they felt understood and even somewhat known by me.

Why was this so powerful in getting through to others and helping me overcome my shyness? Because our identities are essentially composed of what we feel, think and do (FTD). The sad fact of our lives is that it is becoming a rare experience to feel that people are interested in us, much less that anyone would take the time or make the effort to understood or get to know us. If you show interest in others (vs. just waiting your turn to talk), you’re giving people something they don’t get enough of. And when in return they show appreciation to you for it, your shyness spontaneously goes away except for the sweet awkwardness you might feel in their telling you how much they liked speaking to (and feeling understood by) you.

Become that person who is more interested in others than in being interesting and invite others to share their feelings, thoughts and actions and people will shake your hand and you too can overcome your shyness.

A final caveat and insight from business relationship guru and author of Never Eat Alone, Keith Ferrazzi who says, “When you’re alone at a party and feeling uncomfortable, you may give off vibes that say, ‘Stay away from me’ when what you’re really thinking is, ‘I’m just so uncomfortable, I don’t even know how to approach someone to have a conversation.’ So if you see someone who is alone at a gathering, realize that they also may not be telling you to stay away and leave them alone, but dealing with their social anxiety and shyness. Therefore go up to them and initiate the conversation. Who knows, you might be talking to the next Bill Gates (another person not known to be particularly comfortable with purely social interactions).

* FTD – source – “Just Listen” Discover the Secret to Getting Through to Absolutely Anyone

Who is more obnoxious? Someone who gossips and doesn’t know they’re being catty, someone who pontificates and doesn’t know they’re being boring or someone who is judgmental of either and doesn’t know they’re being self-righteous.

I’ll tell you who is classy. Someone who listens and finds the pony of value and of what is interesting in what the other person has to say.  And guess what happens when you do that?  Many people will begin to become interesting in what they say.

Why is that?  Many people go on and on with either gossip or pontification, because they are not consciously aware of who obnoxious it is. One of the reasons they are not consciously aware of it is that thirty seconds after you start talking, you cross over from conveying information to feeling good about just talking and getting relief from stress.

Once you cross over from sharing relevant information (that may actually be of interest to the other person) to getting stuff off your chest, the person listening and who feels put upon begins to demonstrate it by being passive aggressive through fidgeting, looking at their watch or looking for a way to get out of the conversation.  When that happens the person talking unconsciously knows they are losing that other person’s attention.

So what does the person talking do?  You guessed it.  They keep talking, unconsciously hoping to re-engage the other person when in reality they are driving them even further away.

That said, I think it’s about time for me to shut up.  Wouldn’t you agree?

Other resources:

• What’s Your Opinion on This?
• Do You Talk Too Much? (double click slowly to read enlarged version)

Look into the eyes of the person you love, but have problems with.  When you initially look, what you might see is:

• Their resentment
• Their stubbornness
• Their sullenness
• Their being shut down
• Their being closed off
• Their being passive aggressive

And how do those make you feel?  Probably makes you feel (and also look) resentful, stubborn, frustrated, exasperated, angry and/or hurt. And how does feeling any of those make you look to them? Probably impatient, ticked off or about to pounce on them.

Keep looking and now look to see:

• Their fear of you and your disappointment in them
• Their need to prove to you that they are not bad or wrong about everything they do
• Their need to show you that they are not bad or wrong about everything they do
• Their need to look for a way to protect themselves from your feeling judgmental, disdainful and dismissive towards them
• Their need to hide anything that would make you further upset with them

In other words look to see that they are not being stubborn, resistant or rebellious, but rather they are locked in a state of nonrational (i.e. not based on current situation, but reacting based on prior interactions with you or even someone from their distant past), nonfunctional (i.e. if locked in that way of reacting, they are unable to move the current conversation in a productive direction), self-preservation (i.e. they may feel that you believe their thoughts, feelings and actions, a.k.a. their “self” is wrong, stupid and they need to change all of them).

Why do this exercise?

Because if you realize that where they are truly coming from is a place of nonrational, nonfunctional, self-preservation instead of stubborn, rebellious resistance, you will instantly (and transformationally) be able to speak with them instead of at or over them.

An analogy would be imagine you walked out to your car and saw a young man peeing on the side of it.  You would be angry, belligerent and want to yell at them.  But then imagine that when you yelled out, “Hey!” they turned around and you saw that they were severely mentally impaired and didn’t know what they were doing, you would immediately change your tone.

Looking at people in this empathic, caring way is simple in that all it takes is looking at people through the eyes of love.  However it is not easy for those people that are “loving challenged,” because to them “love” is only a noun and something to receive, and not in the best sense of that word, a verb and something to give.

“You listen into people’s eyes,” Doc Barham told me.

I said: “What?”

“When you sit down with people what you first notice is people’s eyes and then you look and listen into them for their hurt, pain, fear, anger and terror and when you do, they share whatever it is with you.  And then they exhale, feel relieved and open themselves up to you.  That is your secret sauce,” he explained.

Doc Barham is CEO of Xtraordinary Outcomes (http://xtraordinaryoutcomes.com) a company which identifies what makes individuals, companies and organizations extraordinary and in doing so, helps them to come from that special “tipping point” place to become even better.  He had been interviewing me about how I work with patients and seem to be able to get through to some of the toughest ones.

Like many “talents” or skills that people have, it was spawned out of a terrible experience.  I hadn’t made the connection until Doc identified the way that I listen.

Nearly thirty years ago, I had one of the more awful experiences in my career as a psychiatrist.  I had been paged to go up to a patient’s room at UCLA Medical Center  to “okay” the soft restraints the surgeons had placed on him plus the major tranquilizer they had then put into his IV.  The patient, who I will call Mr. Jones, was a fifty something patient with AIDS (just after it was identified as an illness), with a terrible infection, who had been placed on a respirator.  He had been pulling out his IV’s and then pulling at his respirator and was in a state of what the surgeons called psychotic agitation.

When I entered Mr. Jones’ room, he was lying with his arms and legs restrained.  His eyes were as big as saucers and they seemed to be screaming out to me.  His eyes in fact grabbed hold of mine as I kept repeating, “What are you trying to tell me?”  Because of the respirator, he couldn’t speak.  All he could do was groan in agony.  I put a pen in his right hand close to the restraint on that wrist and put a piece of paper near it so he could write.  All he could do was scribble something that didn’t make any sense.  I again repeated, “What is it?”  And again he couldn’t communicate what it was.

I concluded that what the surgeons had said was true and that Mr. Jones was psychotic and needing the restraints and the tranquilizer.  I told him: “Mr. Jones, you have pulling your IV’s out and pulling at your respirator tubing and we needed to restrain you and have also given you a tranquilizer to help you calm down.  When you calm down we will take you off the restraints.  I will keep checking in to see how you are doing. Do you have any questions?”  All Mr. Jones could do was stare at me with his eyes wide open terror which were now beginning to show the early signs of being tranquilized.

I checked in with him and his surgeons over the next couple days, but he was mostly sleeping.

Two days later I received a page from his attending chief surgical resident who in a curt manner said to me: “Hey, Mr. Jones is up, alert, off the respirator and commanded us to call YOU.  So I think you should come and see him as soon as you are able.”

With trepidation, I went up to Mr. Jones’ room.  When I arrived he was seated up in his bed. In a non-psychotic and very determined he way grabbed onto my eyes with his, said: “Please sit down,” and with those eyes placed me in a chair.

His eyes never left mine and I could not move mine away.  Then in no uncertain terms and with an emphatic voice he said: “What I was trying to tell you was that a piece of the respirator tubing had broken off and was stuck in my throat.  You do need to know that I will kill myself before I ever get into that situation again.  Do you understand?”

My eye winced and teared up as he revealed the answer to the mystery from my original visit.  I wanted to look away, but couldn’t.  Instead I said, “I’m so sorry that I didn’t know that.  And, yes, I do understand that you will kill yourself before you have to go through something like that again.”

And that is when I began to “listen into people’s eyes.”  I just didn’t know what to call it.

Epilogue: I might not have the opportunity to have had this experience if I were at UCLA today, because it is has undergone a transformation in the past four years where they have become completely patient and patient family centric as documented in the NY Times best selling book, Prescription for Excellence: Leadership Lessons for Creating a World Class Customer Experience from UCLA Health System by Joseph Michelli.

Resources:

• “Just Listen” Discover the Secret to Getting Through to Absolutely Anyone (book)
• “Just Listen” Discover the Secret to Getting Through to Absolutely Anyone (audiobook)

The concept of the Mirror Neuron Gap (previously referred to as the Mirror Neuron Receptor Deficit) is the core concept underlying “Just Listen” Discover the Secret to Getting Through to Absolutely Anyone.  The idea is that the more we “mirror” others especially from the position and values of seeking to be of service, the more likely they are to open themselves up to us, be grateful and want to return that generosity of spirit.

Therefore, when people inspire and motivate you (a.k.a. higher purpose), it narrows your Mirror Neuron Gap.  When people frustrate and exasperate you (a.k.a. hidden or explicit self-serving agenda), it widens your Mirror Neuron Gap.

The article below lists 20 of the most egregious behaviors from Marshall Goldsmith’s mega best seller, What Got Your Here, Won’t Get You There, What makes them so egregious is that they all widen the Mirror Neuron Gaps in other people.  If you do any of these and want to narrow that gap, do the opposite.

*

Here is just one example of the how this process can work well for you to get through to absolutely anyone.

From “Resistant to Doing” to “Listening” – Get them to open their arms in their minds

Remember the line in the children’s song, “The hip bone’s connected to the thigh bone?” Well your body posture in your mind is connected to your actual body posture.  People who are “Resistant to Doing” have their arms crossed and eyes looking at the ceiling communicating, “No way,” either in actuality or in their minds.  If you get them to uncross their arms and look at you instead of crossing their arms or looking at the ceiling in reality or in their minds, they will start to listen to and be open to what you say.

To do that, ask the other person questions about what they’re looking for or want or need and then:

1. Recreate what they said to the word by saying, “So you’re saying that what you are looking for (or want) is…..”  After you do that they will not be offended that you are mimicking them, but actually continue on.  As they begin to explain they will uncross their arms, because they will begin to attach some emotion to what they are saying.

2. As they speak remember what words they have a higher (and more emotional) inflection on. That is often attached to words showing hyperbole such as “never,” “always,” “impossible,” “if only.” Then reply with, “Say more about _____ (the emotionally laden words).”  At that point, they will start to use their hands to emphasize what they are saying, because words alone are not enough and they will begin to be open to what you say next.

3. After they say what they have to say, reply with, “Really!” with genuine enthusiasm in your voice and encouragement to them to keep speaking.

This will often result in the other person being more open to continuing to listen to you.  Try the above and see if it helps.

* If you try it and want to receive live personalized group coaching limited to five people with Dr. Goulston, additional and separate “Get Through NOW” Mastermind groups for managers and for sales people are now forming.  See special offer below.

SPECIAL INTRODUCTORY OFFER!

As one of Dr. Goulston’s newsletter subscribers (sign up at NEWSLETTER SIGNUP at upper right) and for a limited time only, you will receive a discounted rate of $350/month if you sign up to join the live, twice monthly, one hour groups limited to five people now forming for a three month commitment.  That is instead of the customary group rate of $500/month or Dr. Goulston’s individualized hourly coaching rate of $750/hr.

SPECIAL OFFER DETAILS

Additional resources:

• “Just Listen” Discover the Secret to Getting Through to Absolutely Anyone that recently beat out Steve Jobs and Blink! for Business and Investing at Audible Audiobooks.  Previously it reached #1 in China, Germany and Six Kindle business related categories.
• Catch This Week in Start Ups video with host Jason Calacanis interviewing Dr Goulston (reviewer: “I’m only about 10 minutes into the video and have to say that this is one of the most thought compelling videos i have seen on the interwebs.”)
• Hear Dr. Oz’s recent interview with Dr. Goulston on Oprah radio

- Dr. Mark Goulston appearing on Oprah
to discuss “Recoupling Therapy”
on a show about divorced couples that reconciled

When you buy a computer it comes preinstalled with software.  And when you get it out of the box, plug it in, you hear those wonderful chimes on a Mac or on PC Windows that signal you’re good to go.

Then your honeymoon starts and you are zooming through the Internet and using all your productivity software.  But then you hit a glitch.  A screen freezes, documents go unsaved, time to reboot.  Over time the glitches get worse.  Sometimes you have to reinstall the software and sometimes you even have to reinstall the operating system.  I’ve actually reinstalled software, but when it’s a matter of operating systems or even motherboards, I get a little sick to my stomach as I quickly feel in over my head.

When that happens you can rapidly begin to feel vulnerable and exposed (especially if you fear you have lost non-backed up information forever) and that vulnerability can cause you to hate the technology that just months ago you loved taking out of that box when you got home from Best Buy or the Apple Store.

When you fall in love, that comes preinstalled with “loveware” and an operating system called love.  I have used the mnemonic CREATE (as in CREATE love) to make each program easier to remember.

• C = Chemistry is about sex, romance, passion and excitement
• R = Respect and is about both feeling it towards and from each other and proud and lucky to have this other person as your spouse
• E = Enjoyment a.k.a. “fun” is pretty straightforward… you know that’s where you each put a smile on each other’s face
• A = Acceptance where you unconditionally accept and feel accepted for each other’s essence, based on who you each are, not what you each do (but feeling so loved causes you to want to do all sorts of loving thing to show your gratitude)
• T = Trust where you can not only rely on their doing what they say they’ll do, but you can entrust your fears and even your deep doubts about yourself regarding your competence, worthiness or even how good a human being you are.  It’s baring your neck and expecting them to respond emotionally with the reassuring touch of their hand instead of sticking a knife in it.
• E = Empathy where you understand and feel understood by each other.  This goes far beyond feeling figured out.  It’s walking in the other’s shoes and if when you’re there you see they need comfort or reassurance, giving it to them. At its best you feel “felt” and unalone in a world that seems to conspire daily to make you feel alone.

Yep.  When you fall in love, all of these feel present.  In fact it is the felt presence of all of these that often gives us the courage to finally break the ties of dependence or over dependence on our parents.  When we feel all of this loveware is in tact, we feel an emotional safety net that will catch us if we start to fall through the cracks when we finally making that break from our families of origin.  And feeling exuberant and safe is our honeymoon.

But alas.  Just as with our computers, each and sometimes all of the different loveware programs develop glitches.

He or she starts to relax their best behavior that they may have shown during the courtship and starts to burp or even fart, thinking it’s endearing (yougottabekidding).  Loving touch crosses over to groping.  Can’t wait to get into bed becomes, “I’ve got a headache.”  And voila.  Say goodbye to Chemistry.

He or she starts to interrupt, be curt, shut down or nit picky and poof, say so long to Respect.

And when Chemistry or Respect are on the way out, it becomes increasingly difficult to give or get a smile and so bye bye Enjoyment.

Pretty soon Accepting and giving each other the benefit of the doubt turns into being judgmental, offering advice when neither wants to hear it.  And when Acceptance feels most gone, a woman can often feel repulsive to her husband while her husband feels as if everything he does is wrong to his wife.

By now each spouse has probably started to act out passive aggressively so it becomes difficult to Trust them to do what they say they’ll do or if they do, to do it without resentment.  More insidiously is that the ability to bare your neck to the other goes away where each is afraid that if they did, they will be met with a cold, “What do you want me to do? You’re the one who messed up.”

As for Empathy and walking in each other shoes.  You can’t walk in their shoes if all you do is step on their toes.  And neither person has much of a chance of feeling felt when mostly what each feels is contempt.

The challenge is that when these inevitable glitches develop, couples do not have a way to reinstall their loveware.  And when the operating system falls apart and they not only stop loving each other, they barely tolerate each other and neither knows what to do to make it better.

The joke about where sex takes place in a marriage becomes all too true: anywhere when you first fall in love, in the bedroom after you’ve been married a few years (and certainly after children) and finally in the hall when you say, “F**k You! to each other” (and if not in reality, certainly in you mind) when you pass each other.

Sadly very often couples don’t repair those rifts early on before they become too entrenched, not because they lack the will.  It’s because they lack the way as the opening quote said: “to stop hating each other.”

Hatred is the result of hurt and disappointment not being addressed early enough to prevent it from turning into frustration, anger, hostility and in the end, bitterness.

I will address the steps to reinstalling the loveware program and love operating system in your relationship is subsequent blogs.  If you’re anxious to get started, check out The 6 Secrets of a Lasting Relationship: How to Fall Back in Love … and Stay There (Perigee, $15.95). As it says on the back cover, “If you ever lain in bed beyond arm’s length of your partner and thought, ‘What am I doing here?’ or lain in bed by yourself, beyond the reach of anyone, and asked, ‘Will I always be alone?’ this is the book for you.”

And until you and I have a chance to visit again in subsequent blogs, try to be nice to each other.

Here’s the rap on the frequent rifts between emotionally based and logically based partners after the yelling and defensiveness have settled into a coldness that is like ice (and the emotional person is just as likely to be a man and the logical person is just as likely to be a woman).

Both partners are hesitant to enter into the nobody’s land between them that is a combination of both a no-man’s and no-woman’s land created by the animosity between them.  Neither wants to engage someone who is much more likely to bare their teeth or just shut down, than bare their neck regarding the hurt that each feels under the anger they show on the surface (that may be worth reading again and reacting to in your comments).

Before the logical/analytical partner steps into the gap, what the other person says needs to make sense.  Before the emotional/feeling partner enters it, what the other person says need to feel right.  And pure logic feels cold to an emotional person, just as pure emotionality feels “out of control” and crazy to the a logical person.

The truth is that each person is coming from a place of deep hurt and of self-protection much more than an assault on the other.  The proof of this is that at the height of the heated debate between the two, each frequently perceives that the other person is on the attack and saying, “I’m right and you’re wrong.”  More often than not, what each is actually feeling underneath that reaction is, “Damn it! I’m not always wrong!”

Understanding and identifying the hurt that lies within the hatefulness outside is the first step in bridging the gap and getting not just back to tolerating each other, but to liking each other.

The way to do that is calm yourself down and ask yourself, “What’s it like for the other person right now?”  You will usually realize that they don’t like the situation any more than you do and it’s unlikely that they really enjoy disliking you.  More likely is that they are reacting to feeling that you dislike them.

After you have become calmer and more centered, ask the other: “Do you hate this as much as I do and do you feel as powerless to turn it around as I do?”  Hopefully they will agree.

At that point say to them, “I’m not telling you that I’m right and you’re wrong and I’m not telling you that you’re crazy and stupid (to the emotional partner) or cold and clueless (to the logical partner).  What I’m saying is that when you react the way you just did (by becoming emotional or cold and shut down), I feel very hurt and before I let myself know it or show that to you, I turn it into anger and attack (or shut down).  What I am trying to say is that I really do hate it when we get into this place and that I don’t think you like it either.  But I don’t know how to stop it or even keep from making it worse and have no clue how to turn it around.  Do you have any idea what we can do when we get to this place?”

If you can say that in a calm, respectful and humble tone without even a hint of anger, blaming, whining or complaining (which is why you need to let go of your angry reactivity beforehand and take as many deep breaths as you need to become centered), you’re likely to get the response my patient received from his partner when he said the above.

She said, “I don’t know how to stop it or turn it around either, but you’re off to a good start.”

If the above scenario speaks to you, you can find additional resources by checking out: The 6 Secrets of a Lasting Relationship: How to Fall in Love Again… and Stay There (Perigee, $14.95) with special pricing at amazon.com and “Just Listen” Discover the Secret to Getting Through to Absolutely Anyone (Amacom, $24.95) and catch some tips that Oprah seemed to like below:

If the above scenario doesn’t speak to you, there is a likelihood that: a) you’d rather be right than make it better (see someone just like that on Dr. Mark on Montel below); b) you have a pretty wide unforgiving streak that you learned from a parent who is even more unforgiving than you; c) if you don’t change, you are not relationship material.

Usable Insight: If you are angry at your spouse and can’t resist saying something hostile, start talking from the hate you feel on the surface, but don’t stop talking until you are talking from the hurt underneath.

Be more fascinated than fascinating
- Warren Bennis, author of Still Surprised: A Memoir of a Life in Leadership

• How often do you meet people at a conference and wish you had more productive conversations?
• How often do you think afterwards, “I wish I had spoken to more people?”
• How often do you find yourself in a long conversation that you would like to politely disengage from so that you can continue to meet other people?
• How often would you like to make a meaningful connection to one of the conference speakers?

Some of the best tips for addressing these come from Patrick Henry, Assistant Professor of Clinical Entrepreneurship at the USC Marshall School of Business and a Los Angeles based expert on networking at: http://fishingcoach.net and Keith Ferrazzi, author of the two mega best sellers, Never Eat Alone and Who’s Got Your Back?

To address “wishing you had more productive conversations” Patrick suggests that when you meet people, ask them three questions:

1. What does your organization or company do?
2. What do you do at or for your company?
3. What are you looking for at this conference or who would be a good person for you to meet that could help your company or you so that if I run into someone like that I could introduce them to you?

And then be of service to them by making those introductions or suggesting resources including books that might help them.

To address “wishing you had spoken to more people,” Patrick suggests that having more purposeful and focused conversations using the above questions will enable you to meet and talk to more people.

Keith offers another tip about meeting more people and triggering gratitude. He says: “Go up to the person standing alone, engage them and befriend them, because ‘No person goes to a conference wanting to be left alone, they’re alone because they’re shy.’  Realize that some of the most accomplished and successful people, especially in the high tech age are the most personally shy.  Befriend such a person and you can’t imagine the appreciation and good will it will generate.”

Learning how to “disengage from long conversations” will also help you meet more people.

To do that, Patrick suggests being honest and forthright and saying: “I can see that there is much more I would like to find out about you and your company, especially with regard to people I might be able to introduce to you as a source of business or who might be able to help you, but just like you, there are many other people I would like to meet at this conference.  So would you be kind enough to give me one of your cards so I can write down a few notes to remind me of what we spoke about and then could I follow up with you later?”

Regarding “connecting with one of the conference speakers” Patrick advises you to be the first person to ask a question after they finish speaking.  Why?  If there is a pause after someone speaks and there is a call for questions, it can be awkward for both the speaker and the audience.  And if you are the speaker (which I have been), you don’t believe that silence is because you’ve been profound; you believe it’s because you may have been off track.  When you ask a question that both the speaker would want to answer and that audience would want to hear, you provide a service to both.  One question, when appropriate to the talk, that I have found useful to ask is: “If you had it to do over again, what is something you would have done differently that would have save you a lot of hassles later on?” That almost always generates an answer that the speaker wants to answer and that the audience and I want to hear.

Focus on being of service and being more interested than interesting and there is a good chance people will return the favor by being the same with you.

And of course in never hurts to “Just Listen.”