How to #Listen to Yourself, Others and the Big Picture with Victor Pierau

Mar 22, 2021

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Our busy minds can get in our way with connecting to ourselves and others. Often we blame it on all of the distractions around us. Yet, have you ever paid attention to your basic physical energy level and noticed that after a good night's sleep you feel like your battery has been charged and you feel open again to the people around you? Understanding and experiencing the difference between listening to yourself, others and the bigger picture is the secret to leading through listening.

In this episode, Victor focuses on leadership in listening. He explains seven levels of listening and and how to shift between listening to yourself, others and the bigger picture. He shares examples of how to get rid of the noise we all struggle with and tap into the silence needed for visioning while being responsive to the needs of those around us. His dream is for leadership in listening to impact at a larger scale in organizations, between countries or even helping to heal our humanity.

Victor Pierau is an economist with extensive experience in business and psychotherapy. He is fascinated by human interaction and has spent many years studying the science of listening. He discovered that listening takes place on seven levels. He wrote a fascinating and educational book about this, entitled: Leadership in Listening. He has been training and coaching various professionals and entire organizations in better listening for years. Victor owns the company Connessence. Connessence means connecting with the essence.

"Can we really be open to someone else without our ego standing in the way? If we're going to do that, then we start listening to someone else. Otherwise, we only listen to ourselves, to our own ego thoughts." - Victor Pierau

Valuable Resource:

Leadership in Listening: The 7 levels of listening for professionals https://eur-leiderschapinluisteren.nl/en-gb/landingspagina

Listen IN Notes:

02:05 - The first time he noticed the impact listening: The time in his childhood when he was a mediator between his parents helping them dialogue through listening

04:04 - What advice he would give to his younger self: I love you, and you did a great job. It was not your work, it was theirs. But, you found a treasure there, and this treasure can be given to the world.

04:48 - The three orientations to listening: listening to yourself, listening to others, listening to the big picture

06:50 - What listening to himself made him realize.

09:16 - How to help people start to listen: we give people experiences so they can listen to themselves and discover how they are bound by their own ego parts.

11:26 - Taking a look at how ego parts play out in life: Mostly it's the unconscious self, and they are born anywhere in your life sometimes to let you survive, and sometimes they are more conscious.

17:34 - When someone else can help us to listen to ourselves

21:04 - Moving from ego to personality - how this supports in helping businesses manage their teams

23:33 - Leadership in listening in business: I have this strong ego, but I make the conscious choice to let go of it. And realize that when I'm really connected with other people, really connected with my team members, then we can grow much further.

30:28 - What are the seven levels of distortion or noise and how to get rid of them with the seven levels of listening?

35:02 - How does listening to your own convictions help find inspiration in other's convictions?

40:15 -How the simple exercise of talking order impacts listening

42:22 - Why these two go together: Facilitation skills and wanting to listen

44:05 - What is the essence of listening?

44:58 - How do we get organizations to be aware of their poor listening skills and the value of listening.

49:00 - The need for further listening research and sharing the results of listening impact to the world

50:38 - Victor sharing his biggest dream

Key Takeaways:

"When you forget to listen to yourself, well, then you don't know if you listen well to anyone else." - Victor Pierau

"To begin with, it is so important that you have a real connection with yourself, by listening to yourself. And if you're able to do that, then you can start listening to someone else." - Victor Pierau

"Listening to yourself means that you are getting a better picture of your own ego parts." - Victor Pierau

"We have all of those ego parts in ourselves -- with those emotions, with those convictions. And if we are not aware of them, there is a kind of filter between what someone is telling us and what we can hear." - Victor Pierau

"The importance of listening to someone else is that you can help others in discovering their own ego parts." - Victor Pierau

"It's really a matter of choice where you want to listen to. Is it your own needs? Or is it the bigger picture we are serving in this organization, or the bigger picture of why we are together in a team where I am the manager." - Victor Pierau

"Leadership in listening not only applies to a team or as a manager, but this applies on a global level, as well. And when I realized that...then you can see that listening can heal wounds, not only on an interpersonal level but also at a global level. It's not only about things or managers, it's also about countries, and also about humanity." - Victor Pierau

"When you listen to someone else, you listen to the convictions of someone else. And you try to listen to the inspiration of other people. But when your own convictions are so hard, then it's maybe impossible to listen to what someone else has to say. So (that person) is not able to inspire you because of your own convictions." - Victor Pierau

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