'Listening 2by2: A Paradigm Shift for Leaders'‪ ‬ listening SUPERPOWER podcast

Leadership can get lonely. And when under pressure, it's often hard to be vulnerable in front of your team members. It can feel like the weight of decision-making and responsibility falls all on you.  What if there were another way.  One that could create a transformative culture where everyone is heard and valued, giving rise to enthusiasm and engagement, growing a better and stronger organization.
Authors Michael Gingerich and Tom Kaden co-lead the organization Someone To Tell It To, whose mission is to cultivate meaningful relationships through compassionate listening and training others to do the same. They have recently launched their new book, Listening 2by2: A Paradigm Shift for Leaders', showing how listening to stories is a powerful tool In this episode, Tom and Michael share how they strive every day, either at home or in the workplace, to listen with intention. They also talk about their book and the story of a CEO’s leadership journey, where they paint a culture of listening as a paradigm shift that can create unexpected magic for an organization. It creates an atmosphere where people feel safe to express themselves and their vulnerabilities, they are heard and known better, relationships are deepened, and people are more valued.  And this leads to success in an organization.
 
"In order to listen well, you have to believe that the person is worthy of being heard. That's what we believe is at the top." - Tom Kaden



Listen In Notes:
 
01:06 - Experiencing a powerful impact of listening two-by-two: Having two team members listen to them as leaders about some of the burdens carry as the CEOs that not everyone else knows about. It's just so healing for us. And, we found just a lot of comfort and safety. But it's just nice for us to be the ones being heard.
 
07:28 - Describing the new paradigm shift of listening 2by2: If we are not listening, we are not hearing what others need. We're not hearing their ideas, we're not understanding their feelings, we're not really paying attention to them, really not valuing them, really not enabling them to be the best people they can be. That's a picture we want to paint that we want to show people that listening needs to be at the very top of everything we do.
 
14:02 - How does listening 2by2 create that sense of safety: It helps to give more courage to whatever needs to be said, whatever needs to be shared
17:28 - How they vet the listening pairs in their organization so that they get along well and see things in common and divergent ways. 
 
19:47 - How having different perspectives complement more and become very helpful 
 
22:21 - Listening with intention can change culture: If you ask those you lead how they'd like to be treated, and then intentionally listen to their answers, and respectfully consider them, you will have the beginning of a transformed culture that helps people be excited and enthusiastic about their work. 
 
25:33 - They describe the acronym LISTEN from the book: the value that we've assigned to the last letter N is Notice. The CEO in the book, began to notice his employees. And that made a huge difference. Then that also translated to home, where he noticed things about his children, about his wife.  And their relationships improved. And he was happier. 
 
27:44 - Noticing others creates an opportunity to notice oneself and the different layers to oneself that needs work
 
28:31 - Listening as a facilitator of change: It's exciting to see team members who are excited about what they do, who constantly strive to do better, who constantly want to be their best, and have new and creative ideas all the time because it's safe.
 
30:15 - The paradigm shift that happens when you become the story seeker in listening
 
33:31 - The huge impact leaders bring when they know how to care: To know that others know who we are makes a huge difference. 
 
34:36 - Simplifying self-care for leaders: At the end of the day