Broad listening
Hello, I’m back — last week was a Jewish holiday and I did not work on weekly writing. I need to dial it back to once a week… the hardest part about “just starting” is remembering that “keep going” comes right after. 😅Once a week seems more sustainable when I’m the only one watching and holding myself accountable.
In the spirit of building in public, I wanted to jot down a thought I had while working on services offerings:
One of the skills that gets talked about a lot is “deep listening.” There is plenty to wade through if you google it. What I have never really seen talked about is what I’m going to call “broad” listening.
I’m defining this as holding pieces of information you’ve picked up while listening to individuals, and thinking about them collectively in a separate dialogue with your intuition— like scraps of paper on a table that hold letters, and you’ve got to put them in order to get the message.
In other words it’s not about picking up sound waves with your ears and interpreting them with your brain, but rather picking up signals with your intellect and interpreting them with your instincts.
This is the secret sauce at Unlikely Connections, and pretty much all of my career. It’s also how I serve others as a connector.
I don’t mind telling you this because the beautiful thing is you can’t steal it. You can only do it in your own way, which is awesome and necessary and in no way worth hoarding for myself.
Broad listening causes “holy sh✨t!” and “Oh!” and “A ha!” which are, of course, the magic words to switch on your curiosity. (Sort of like when you say “Open sesame” to enter the cave of wonders. 🧞♂️)
Today broad listening helped me finish figuring out the services offerings I needed to put together, and I’m grateful to all the people who had interesting things to say and sat on the phone with me or got coffee to tell me them over the last two weeks that I’ve been stuck.
I wonder what message is waiting for you to broadly listen to?
