About this course
Most leaders were trained to speak, present and write. Very few were trained to listen. This course closes that gap.
Add up a working week and listening takes the largest share of it: briefings, one-to-ones, phone calls, a colleague thinking out loud, a supervisor explaining why the numbers came in late. Almost every task a leader is paid to do, from making a decision to rating a year of performance, runs on what you took in before you acted. And yet listening is usually assumed, not taught. Most of what people need you to know, they never say directly. Listening is how you find it anyway. The whole course fits on one line: listening is a choice you make before the conversation starts, a stage you hold while it runs, and a deposit you leave when it ends.
It starts with the foundation. You look at why leaders have to listen, from servant leadership to the way conflict escalates when a concern goes unheard, and at what listening actually is when you define it carefully: receiving, constructing meaning and responding. A short listening test, and a bet on your own score, shows the distance between how well you think you listen and how well you do. Then the distinction the course rests on: hearing happens to you, listening is something you choose. From there you build active listening from the outside in: the listening equation (deliberate intent, focused attention and an accurate response), the ten practices of active listening, and the ten barriers, adapted from Ralph Nichols, that quietly get in the way and how to give your mind a better job while someone else is talking.
Next comes the message under the words. Manifest listening takes in what is said; latent listening hears what is meant. You learn to notice the second voice in your own head, to tell bottom-up from top-down listening, and to answer the question underneath ("Have you taught this before?" usually means "Am I in good hands?"). Then the three stages of listening: Stage 1, where your attention is on what the words mean to you; Stage 2, where it is on the other person; and Stage 3, where it takes in the whole room, which is where influence lives. You practice the switch from Stage 1 to Stage 2, and look at the thirteen ways to develop latent listening.
At the center of the course is psychodynamic listening for leaders. Every conversation leaves a deposit, of trust or of erosion, and people may forget what you said but they keep the deposit. You look at the ten deadly sins you commit without a word, at keeping an open mind about people you think you already know, and at why problems do not go away when you do not help solve them. Then No Negative in the Unconscious, a listening model drawn from Freud's essay on negation: when someone tells you what something isn't, they may be telling you what it is. You learn the four faces of indirection (hedging, qualifying, deflecting and buried negation), and what to do with what leaked: store it, don't confront it, and choose the right intervention at the right time.
The course then turns to the room. Understanding your audience covers four listener types and how to reach each one, and how to use what you learn about them to motivate and persuade. An optional module, Standard vs ENRICH (Ethnicity, Nationality, Race, Identity, Culture and Heritage), asks whose listening norms you were trained to treat as normal, and what that costs you with people who were trained differently; the course stands complete without it. The course closes with Nichols' keys to effective listening, a five-day deposit audit, a 90-day plan built on awareness, feedback from two people you trust and measurement, and the leader's choice: every conversation is a deposit, and there is no neutral.
Who it is for
- Anyone who leads or works with other people.
- Managers and team leads who suspect that important things reach them late, or not at all.
- Leaders who want people to bring them problems early, and to leave conversations feeling heard.
- Anyone who negotiates, runs meetings, or works across teams and cultures, where what is meant is often not what is said.
Learning objectives and outcomes
By the end of the course you will be able to:
- Tell hearing from listening, and choose to listen. Listening is a decision before it is a skill.
- Use the ten practices and catch the ten barriers in yourself. What good listening looks like, and what gets in the way.
- Hear the latent message under the manifest one. Answer the question that is actually being asked.
- Move between the three stages of listening. And recover from Stage 1 fast when you slip.
- Read negation and indirection, and know what your listening deposits. What people tell you by saying what something isn't, and what your attention tells them.
What is included
The Participant Booklet is the knowledge companion to the course: the ten practices, the three stages, the listening deposit and the latent channel explained in full, with workplace scenarios in every chapter, private reflection prompts, and a Quick Reference Guide for the week you do not have time to read a chapter. The Participant Workbook is a fillable PDF that puts the course to work on two real conversations of your own: one where you were the listener, when someone you lead or a peer brought you something that mattered, and one where you brought something to a person with power over you. It takes you step by step through your listening baseline, the stage you were in, the message under the words and what you deposited, then brings the two conversations together, and ends with your 90-day shift and your commitments. Use it alongside the workbook prompts in the videos. Nothing in either one is collected.
Chapters
21 chapters, 2 h 29 min of video.
- 00Welcome6:56
The skill you use most and were taught least: where this course sits, what you will be able to do, what the course covers, how to use these videos, and the two real conversations to bring with you.
- 01Why Leaders Have to Listen6:59
Why almost every leadership task runs on what you took in, servant leadership, and how unheard concerns escalate.
- 02What Listening Is9:25
Receive, construct meaning, respond; a short listening test and the bet you will probably lose; the facts about how people listen.
- 03Hearing vs. Listening8:52
One happens to you, the other you choose, and why the other person can tell which one you did.
- 04Active Listening: The Ten Practices7:30
The listening equation, the ten practices of active listening, and putting three of them together.
- 05The Ten Barriers10:31
Ten habits of attention that get in the way, in three families, and what to do with your spare thinking time.
- 06Respond to the True Message6:32
Manifest and latent listening, the voice in your own head, and bottom-up and top-down listening.
- 07Answer the Question Underneath8:58
The questions behind the questions, three ways to say the same words, decoding everyday phrases, and the latent themes in every work group.
- 08Stage 1, Stage 2, and the Switch6:21
One-way and two-way listening, the Stage 2 loop, and an exercise in making the switch.
- 09Stage 3 and Where Influence Lives8:37
Three-way listening, what the research on words and tone does and does not say, and thirteen ways to develop latent listening.
- 10The Listening Deposit7:37
Trust deposits and erosion deposits, scoring your own, and why one good conversation cannot fix a depleted account.
- 11Ten Deadly Sins and the Open Mind4:42
What you say without a word, and how to hear people you think you already know.
- 12Problems Do Not Go Away6:08
What happens when you do not help solve people's problems, where the word comes from, and how to help someone who struggles to explain.
- 13No Negative in the Unconscious6:07
A listening model drawn from Freud's "Negation": how denial names the thing, and the four faces of indirection.
- 14Indirection in Detail5:34
Hedging, qualifying, deflecting and buried negation in workplace sentences, and why people negate instead of stating.
- 15Store, Don't Confront9:09
What to do with what leaked: protect, don't expose; the well-timed intervention; and listening to your own negations.
- 16Understanding Your Audience6:31
Four listener types and how to reach each, reading your audience while you talk, and when to have the conversation that matters.
- 17Standard vs ENRICH, Part One6:03
Optional module. What ENRICH stands for when you listen, where the listening norms were set, and low-context and high-context communication.
- 18Standard vs ENRICH, Part Two6:26
Optional module. The same words read two ways, what the Standard view says and what ENRICH adds, and four moves before you judge.
- 19Keys to Effective Listening5:11
Six keys, why listening is the foundation of every other competency, and your five-day deposit audit.
- 20The 90-Day Shift and the Leader's Choice4:42
Your 90-day plan, your listening commitment, an exercise to do this week, and the choice every leader makes in every conversation.