Empathy Based Listening as Your Differentiator

The Forward Thinking Podcast, Powered by FCCS

Empathy-Based Listening (EBL) is the transformative skill that can elevate your leadership and transform your listening skills. On this episode of The Forward Thinking Podcast, FCCS VP of Marketing and Communications Stephanie Barton is joined by Eric Maddox, speaker at the upcoming FCCS RISK 360 conference in Boston, author, motivational speaker and consultant who is known for the empathy-based listening method that is responsible for the capture of Saddam Hussein. Together they explore EBL, how to really listen to what really matters to clients and colleagues, and how to remove distractions from your conversations.

Episode Insights Include:

Tracking down Saddam Hussein with empathy-based listening

• From interrogations in a tight-knit Iraqi community to gaining the trust of prisoners, EBL was the key to tracking down the world’s most wanted man.

• Prisoner conversations begin at a negative-trust level.

• Eric’s biggest challenge was taking the enemy's trust from a negative level to a positive level.

Effective techniques for building real trust

• Every conversation creates the potential for a relationship.

• Every moment together can become a future partnership.

• Positive partnerships are founded when one person shows interest in the other, not only in themselves.

Transitioning to empathy based listening

• Eric recalls the specific prisoner who helped him realize that he needed to change his approach to listening.

• Partnerships don’t have to be about kindness and friendliness, but they do need to be about understanding.

• EBL can open up an avenue to the highest level of trust regardless of the circumstances.

• When Eric couldn’t get any of his prisoners to cooperate, he only had the option of looking at and changing his own approach.

• The utilization of EBL has taken prisoner cooperation from 4% to 65%.

Applying EBL to business professionals

• Business culture can be improved by empathy-based listening.

• Relationships between lenders and borrowers tend to be imbalanced in favor of the lender.

• The person providing the service has the expertise and knowledge, and tends to focus only on trying to solve their problems.

• Identifying what makes a borrower’s situation unique creates a level of trust that cannot be matched.

• It only takes 3 minutes to ask questions about the other person to build real trust.

Effective listening techniques

• Limit the major distraction of making sure that you know what you are going to stay next.

• The other person needs to know that you’re listening more than they need to hear your value proposition.

• Put the other person first- before your value proposition.

• Shift away from being first to being a more empathetic listener.

• Listen for the key words or phrases that the other person shares with you and wants to hear you repeat back to them- identify those breadcrumbs.

• Get off your own stage and get onto the other person’s stage.

Resolving conflict with EBL

• Establish core goals regardless of trust levels.

• Discover the other person’s concerns by asking what their core goals are.

• Take the first step to get on their side and then meet them in the middle.

Lessons learned from EBL

• With EBL, good is the enemy of great. There is much more work that needs to be done.

• Leadership is about solving problems that we have never faced before.

• Approaching problems happens more effectively with a clean slate.

• Empowering others creates greater opportunities for effective leadership.

This podcast is powered by FCCS.

Resources

Connect with Eric Maddox – Eric Maddox

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