What if one of the greatest gifts you could give someone isn't your advice but your attention?

Most of us think we're good listeners. But if we're honest, we're often preparing our response, jumping to solutions, making assumptions, or filling every moment of silence before someone has truly felt heard.

In this powerful conversation, leadership expert and bestselling author Heather Younger shares why being fully present may be one of the most Christlike ways we can love the people around us—and how learning to listen well can transform our marriages, parenting, friendships, workplaces, and communities.

Show Notes

When was the last time you felt truly heard?

Not interrupted. Not fixed. Not rushed. Just deeply seen, understood, and valued.

In this encouraging episode of The Collide Podcast, Willow sits down with bestselling author, keynote speaker, and leadership expert Heather Younger to explore why active listening is one of the most powerful ways we can love another person.

Drawing from her own story of growing up feeling unseen and unheard, Heather shares how God transformed her pain into purpose. Today, she equips leaders, families, and organizations around the world to create healthier relationships through the simple—but often overlooked—practice of listening well.

Together, Willow and Heather unpack why we rush to solve problems, how curiosity builds trust, why silence is often necessary for meaningful conversations, and how slowing down creates space for healing.

If you've ever wanted stronger relationships, healthier communication, or to love people more like Jesus, this episode will give you practical tools you can begin using today.

In This Episode You'll Learn:

• Why feeling heard is one of our deepest human needs
• How asking better questions builds trust and deeper relationships
• The importance of slowing down instead of rushing to solutions
• Why curiosity is one of the greatest expressions of love
• What it looks like to love others the way Jesus did—through presence

Connect with Heather - Website | Instagram.

Connect with Willow - Website | Instagram | Facebook

Order Willow’s New Book! National Bestseller | Collide: Running into Healing When Life Hands You Hurt

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Additional Collide Resources

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The Insight Journal is a free tool to help you pause and take stock of all that you’ve been through, all that you’ve learned, all that you want to leave behind and reflect on lessons learned in hard times to take with you on the journey ahead.

Hey there. Welcome to the Collide Podcast. This is Willow Weston, the host of this podcast and I absolutely love hanging out with you every single week.

If you're new to this space, we have interviews coming at you every single week.

You can subscribe, subscribe on whatever platform you get your podcast and this will come to you and you will be glad that you subscribe because we are seeing God show up and run into people's lives and bring about healing and transformation and purpose and amazingness. And today is no different. I am handing you an interview with Heather Younger.

She's the founder and CEO of Employee Fanatics, which is a leading employee engagement and consulting firm. She's a keynote special speaker and she's the author of three best selling books.

One is called the seven Intuitive Laws of Employee Loyalty, which was actually named by Forbes as one of their must read books for HR professionals. You might not be an HR professional, but maybe you're a leader. She also wrote the Art of Caring Leadership and she wrote the Art of Active Listening.

And so check out those books. I know you'll want to after you hear this interview where we spend a ton of time talking about the power of listening.

And I don't know about you, but I often can think I'm a good listener until I'm in a conversation where I'm constantly wanting to jump to conclusions, make assumptions, interrupt. I want to fast forward and get to the solution and not sit in the pain.

I do so many of these things that she discusses in this interview, so check it out. Foreign Heather, I'm so excited to spend some time with you. You have written several best selling books, you travel all around.

In fact, you just mentioned to me offline that you're in a hotel room. You are a keynote speaker and you teach a lot about the art of active listening.

So I want to have a great conversation where we get to sit and listen to you. Talk to us about listening today.

Absolutely. I can't wait. Let's do it.

I love it. Why is listening so important to you personally?

Well, you know, I had to. This has been like a deep dive for me in my life thinking about my journey.

I come from a interracial, interfaith background and my mom is white and Jewish. My dad is black and Christian. But my mom's family wasn't kind of happy about the marriage. They didn't really, they didn't want it to happen.

It's like a whole long story. But in the end I was there and I'm the only child and I kind of spent a lot of my life feeling like my voice wasn't heard.

Like no one, I wasn't important enough. Like I wasn't valued or understood for who I am as a human. And, and I remember like going to my grandmother's funeral. I was 36 years old.

It was the very first time I ever attended a large family gathering. And no one up to that point ever allowed, like, I was never invited nor was I allowed to go any of these public family gatherings.

I was literally the black sheep of the family. And so I felt kind of invisible, unheard, voiceless. And it made me want to be a person.

And I kind of made a commitment to myself that I was going to create a world where everybody had a voice and their, their voice was heard and valued. And so I just, in my own little way, I try to try to do that with my, my own personal interactions. Am I 100% at that or perfect? I'm not.

But it's a huge focus for me. And just in my journey and all the work I do points back to how well have, has the other person been hurt on the other end.

And yeah, so that's, that's really the journey there.

I love that you shared your personal experience in your own family. I'm sort of curious because a lot of people, and I'm sure you work with a lot of people where that is their experience.

They feel unseen, unheard, they don't have a voice, but they get stuck there and they don't sort of like break out of that and, and realize no, God gave you a voice. You, you should feel seen, you should feel heard. You're worthy of that. How did you get unstuck from that experience that you had as a kid?

Oh, that's so funny you say that because I'm actually in town in Hartford right now. I'm going to be speaking to a group. Exactly on that topic of how to get unstuck.

Because I feel like many of us get in our own way and we become victim of our circumstances. We let it. We let our circumstances kind of swallow us up. And I do believe, I truly do believe and I always have.

I always felt like I was like, quote, unquote, destined for greatness. And greatness didn't mean like destined for greatness.

Like you're going to be like some millionaire or you're going to be like on the you're flashing light. That's not really what it meant ever for me.

I always felt like the impact that I, that I was called to the work That I do and that the impact that I was going to have was going to be vast. And I didn't know what it was when I was a little girl. I didn't really know.

And so it's become more and more obvious that the impact is through other people. So it's kind of teaching other people to be better for others and then the impact is extended that way.

So I think it was just the calling was really strong and I was being supported and hugged and protected along the way. And I think my faith, I didn't realize it then because my faith wasn't as strong as it is now.

But I do think that, you know, Jesus was right there with me, to be honest. Along the entire journey.

Did you have anyone that God used along the way who said, heather, you have a voice that God wants to use to help other people? I mean, were there moments along the way where you were invited or given permission slip to open up your voice.

And start using it in a really strange way? My grandmother, who was the one who kind of kept me on the outside and really kind of kept me hidden, even though she and I had.

It was a very weird, we had a good close relationship that also had this total distance and like hiddenness about it. But she would be that. She was the person who kind of convinced me to go to law school. And of course, lawyers already have a voice.

I don't know if she was quite going there, understanding that, but that's kind of started me down the road of, you know, realizing, wow, people hear me, people are listening, people are recognizing. You know, I used to, I couldn't stand my voice, the sound of my voice because it's so deep.

And I remember going through drive throughs and people would always call me sir when they would hear me on the thing and I'd be like, I can't stand this thing. And as I went to law school and I started to do like mock trial and things like that, I noticed people paid attention to this deep, deep voice.

And I don't know, I just, I really started to realize the power in that moment. But I wouldn't say there was not one particular person who did that for me.

I just accept, you know, on, on this earth, I tell you, I said, I believe I was called to this work. I do it every day because I do feel called to do it. And, and that's where I, that's where I find the source and summit is.

I love that so much. You said that we often get in our own way or we become A victim of our own circumstance. And I think that's so true for so many of us.

I wonder if you could help us understand maybe some indicators that we're doing that.

Well, I think like if we, whenever we start saying things like I can't do that, they do that. I don't have, I don't have control over that. That's not my decision like that kind of speaking. What it says is that I've given all my power away.

So like someone else controls the power that I should have. So the victim side is like, oh, I can't, they won't let me. Or I some. Something that's like quote unquote holding me back.

And so I excuse my behavior based upon this outside force that's holding me back from doing the thing or being the person I want to be. So that's where the victim thinking is and we all get there. So like, I'm not making fun of this at all because I have been there and I do go there.

I recognize it though. And so I'm able to kind of return it around.

And I talk a lot about this thing on reframing, trying to reframe our circumstances, to see the thing in front of us as a thing that's not as bad as we thought.

And so it's like the thing in front of us stays the thing in front of us, but how we see the thing in front of us makes all the difference based upon our, like our next. Our next steps, our next course of action.

So reframing is like taking a negative thing or an irrational thought and replacing it with a rational thought. And so if we can learn to kind of versus just doing automatic reframing, being intentional about reframing, that makes a huge difference.

Another thing that is a good one to kind of get unstuck, stop being victim. Victim thinking, victim sounding is also to kind of figure out what that calling or your mission is in life.

Like this thing that's bigger than the thing you're facing, whatever that thing is that you're facing, what is the thing that's bigger than that? That's. And it's also something that could move you forward in a more positive light and focusing like on a bullseye of that thing.

And when we focus on the bullseye that thing, it makes the other things kind of. They're not totally gone, but they almost like dissipate. I also, I often like think of the Microsoft Teams when we.

A lot of people use teams and in the background it gets like, you can make. Create that kind of like weird foggy looking background when no one can see the background.

That's kind of what happens when you do this bullseye focusing thing.

It kind of creates this like foggy background on the stuff that's gross and you want to get away from it and it creates more clarity, like the bullseye thing when, when you do that, it allows you to really focus on the thing that can move you forward. So you could be right in the middle of muck. And I lived with other muck.

There was drug addiction, there was all kinds of things in my family and I just, I lived in the muck, but I also chose to live outside the muck. And so I almost like hate to say ignored my circumstances, but I just kind of kept saying nope.

Like there's something bigger, nope, I'm destined for it. I just kept almost refusing it even though I was living in it.

I love that so much. What is the thing that's bigger than the thing? It's a good question for all of us to ask.

I want to ask you some questions about this active listening that you teach on so often. Can you teach us what is the difference between active listening and passive listening?

Yeah, I mean passive listening is something that just kind of happens on the side. Like it's, it's not something that requires a lot of our focus or our attention. I call it fake listening or half listening.

It's that thing we know when we hear about listening to respond versus listening to understand someone real. Active listening is multifaceted. It has an element of awareness of an environment external to us. It has an awareness of internal to us.

It has an under, like a seeking to understand of someone else.

And kind of a, I like to call it tennis matched way of listening where it's like a back and forth where you ask good questions and you, and you and you pause and reflect and listen and then take action on it and then, and then come back to the people who gave you feedback and let them know what you're going to do about it or what you plan to do about it or what you can't do about it or whatever. And so it's multifaceted. It's much more complex than we, than we used to think of as active listening.

So before we thought of active listening, that word active listening as okay, my ears are perked up, I'm leaning in and attention, I'm shaking my head, which is important.

It's an important part of active listening, which is the seeking to understand phase where we do need to be Locked into the message where we want to ask the right questions and then make sure that whatever they said before that we kind of bring it into the next part of what we say to them. It's like conversational threading, basically.

It's where you take something that's said here and you just continue to kind of move it along in the conversation so that they know you're following along and you understand them. That's super important. On the understanding phase, what most of us do is we kind of half do that.

So we half do the understanding phase where we try to. And then all of a sudden, like, I think, oh shoot, my stomach started growling, I'm a little hungry.

Or oh, shoot, I wonder what Jennifer was doing when she was talking about this. But I'm in the conversation with Jim, but I'm asking, I'm thinking about Jennifer and then I'm like, oh, shoot, oh shoot.

I gotta remember to get that cleaners. Go to the cleaners to get the thing for the dress for the party tonight. So these things are all happening.

It's like racing through our minds and we're half listening. We just aren't all there. It's a big problem. It's a problem because the reason why it's a problem, it's a problem for two reasons.

One is the person who is in front of us needs us in that moment. They need us to see them, they need us to hear them, they need us to understand them. When we don't, and they know it, we leave a void in them.

Like the void I had in me, where you feel inconsequential, you feel unworthy. And so the people now are walking around just kind of, you know, depleted, depressed, and not feeling like they're like a valued human on the planet.

The other thing that it does for us, kind of the second part is if we are doing half listening, we are never getting to the truth.

And then what we do about our day is that we go around solving for half truth and we're not solving for the real thing, which means the other people don't feel hurt or valued. Understood. We aren't achieving all the goals and the things that we wanted to because we are half in and half out.

So we got to get all in, we got to kneel in, we got to jump in. And we have to commit to the steps after that, which are things like reflecting on what was said to us instead of just quickly acting on it.

Unless it's like a life or death situation that we have to act quickly or Acting after we've done this, I call it decoding, after we've really reflected on what it is we've heard. Going to act in a way that's really thoughtful instead of again, like knee jerk.

Because I don't know about anybody else listening out there, but there's probably times when each of us has acted too quickly and for the wrong reasons.

Like on the wrong thing, we focus on the wrong thing, we act in the wrong thing and we actually might have left someone worse off than when we started. Or they're mad at us now because we're like, no. They're like, you didn't even hear me at all.

I didn't want you to do a darn thing, but you did the thing and didn't ask permission first.

So these are some of the things that I like to teach about because there's, there's subtleties and there's cues that are non verbal and there are other things that you can ask directly to get to the bottom of what somebody wants from you. And we don't do that. Usually we just move, move, move, move. Let me respond to slack. Let me respond to this, let me respond to that.

Let me respond to this person. Let me go. Do, do, do. Yes, I'm so good. Look how good I am. I'm listening, I'm acting.

But we aren't taking the reflective time to say, is the action I'm doing tied to the actual need of the person who told me the thing they told me.

It's funny, I'm thinking of so many things I want to ask you. I'm taking various notes, but I'm picturing my family dysfunction unraveling in a moment.

I'll welcome you into that because I think people listening have this happen all the time, which is in our family. There's a lot of passionate people, strong personalities. We care deeply, we talk about everything.

And sometimes though, when someone expresses something that they're feeling or a frustration or, you know, a bad day or whatever, whatever it is, another person will just jump straight to the solution, like almost while the person's still sharing. It's like we want to fast forward to the solution without making space for the problem.

And I'm curious why you think we do that and how we can get better at that.

Yeah, I would say there's a lot of reasons why I think we go straight to the solution. Part of it is our impatience. Everything is delivered so quickly to us these days, isn't it? We just want everything fast, we want everything fat.

This listening Thing is hard work, because it actually, if it's done well, it's probably done much more slowly than we do anything else in our lives. So it is going to require a high level of intentionality.

Also, if we continue to focus like a bullseye on why the person is in front of us and what they need from us in the moment, it might help us slow down the pace.

And here's one way we can do that, as at the beginning of a conversation where someone comes to us and it's clear they just at least to start, they want us to hear. They need someone to hear them, okay? So they come to us.

One thing that's really good to do is in the beginning of conversation, say, okay, I have a question for you. Before we get started, I want to see. Do you want me to do anything?

At the end of this conversation, like, before we even get started, do you think there's going to. Something you want me to go do? And they say, oh, no, no, I just really want to talk to you. I just want to. I just want you to hear me. Okay, great.

So you're going through and you're listening, which kind of lets you off the hook a little bit because you shouldn't be thinking too much about solutioning because they told you they don't want you to do a thing. They just. They just want you to hear that. So don't be. Because they're saying they told you, right? You asked them and then they told you.

Okay, so now you're doing it, but all of a sudden you're like midway through, and it's like, this is sounding like she actually wants me to do something. So I'm going to keep listening, and then I'm going to get to the end and I'm going to say, and I'm going to ask questions.

I'm going to keep asking questions, and then I'm going to get to the end and say, okay, at the very beginning, I asked if there was anything that you thought you might want me to do, and you said no, you didn't think so you just wanted me to listen and hear you. And now I'm at the end, and midway through, I was getting a sense that you actually do want me to do something. So now I'm going to ask you again.

Is there something you actually want me to do? Is there a way that I can help you? Can I help you solve for this? So that. That's one way to do it?

Because if you ask for permission, number one, you won't get in trouble later because you took action without them wanting you to act number two. You can then start to ask questions about them, about what kind of solutions they want you to go do for them, like what do they want you to do next?

And then you can brainstorm that together and then go do the next best thing.

And it's based upon what they told you they needed from you versus some guest assumed solution that you just come up with because you half listen to them. So I would say those are some of the things. It's like I said, this is, it's real complicated.

It makes someone even like me who trains on this, speaks on this, writes on this. I have, I go in my head because so much of this is a mind game. I'm in my head going, stop it, stop it, stop it. Nope, nope, don't.

Like for the solutioning part, don't, don't. And I'm just constantly having to do that. And I think we all have to do it. Our brains are moving quickly, our lives are moving quickly.

Shush the messages, shush the brick, because you are doing yourself and them a huge issue. It's not going to be good for them or you if you don't get to the truth and they don't feel hurt.

It's so crazy. And I've learned this the hard way. I'm a mom of young adults now, 18 and 20 year old.

But you know, I found that when I actually just ask questions and listen to say, my 20 year old as he's, you know, pouring out on the couch and sharing stuff, rather than me doing what I want to do, which is jump to, here's my advice when I take the time to listen more than not after I don't know what you would say is happening. I don't know if I'm like, you know, depositing something in his love bank, I don't know what it is.

But if I don't give any advice, which is abnormal for me, and, and I just let him share and just ask him questions, by the end he's asking me for advice. What is that? What is happening?

The human experience where you actually want to hear wisdom, advice from the people who make space to listen to your story.

Yeah, there's a trust built in that, isn't there?

In that exchange, there's a trust built because you took the time to pause and slow down and to really hear them and maybe even reflect some comments. Not, not solutions, comments back or different things back. Now you've built trust and they know they can depend on you to kind of keep that space.

And now they're prepared because the trust that was built to go to the next step, which is asking you for help. And before that they might not know you, you were armed to be able to do that or that you can help them.

But in that process of the slowing down, you know, asking the right very curious questions now you've built trust. That's the difference. That's what you just found right there.

Whether the dream is to build stronger community, write a book, start a non profit, tell your story, adopt a child, or take a step toward healing past wounds, Collide's newest Bible study, Go Ahead will encourage you not to let risk aversion or fear get in the way of an invitation from God. What does an extraordinary life look like for you? What if your biggest dreams can come true?

Go Ahead is available now on our [email protected] what are the top few no no's when it comes to listening?

Well, I think the biggest thing is a lot of times so I'm a relator. It's who I am. I like to relate with the person the other end. And that's not a bad thing to relate.

But if you make, if you make the thing that they came to you to talk to about them about you now so you relate so much that you switch it to about you and all of a sudden you're trying to solve your issue, that's a problem. So there's a fine line between relating to the other person by like for example, going oh my gosh, I could see how you feel that way.

A similar thing happened to me. And then you keep talking about you versus a similar thing happened to me. And here's what I found.

But let's talk more about this thing that you're doing. And then it's like they can see the similarity but you're still coming back to their conversation.

Don' just take, don't, don't take, don't just steal the conversation away because you just, you haven't, they haven't felt heard by you in the, in the, in the end, if we think about all of the depression and even maybe suicide and just some of the things that are happening where people are in the End they feel alone.

They feel like kind of like a number, like, not like a individual person that's valued in and of themselves by our giving them our presence, our undivided attention, sitting sometimes in quiet with them, only just being there to be present, like, for. So that they don't feel the loneliness, but maybe not even seeing or saying words.

If we don't do that, we can't be, like, the solution to some of these world's problems. And that's what we do. By listening. I know people are like, wow, that's kind of big. That's like huge. Heather.

It is because there are people that have said, like, I thought about taking my life. I thought I was really depressed. And this person saw me at work, they mentioned my name, they said hello. I didn't even think they knew me.

I didn't say. And these are the things.

It's like, if you don't feel seen, valued, understood, heard, and for who you are and the opinions you bring and all of those things, you start to wonder, should I even be here in the workplace, in the family, in the universe kind of thing, right? And so I think we. And we all do this questioning and some of us do it to a greater degree. So I think that's the key is just.

It's just saying, understanding the importance of your. Of your being quiet, the fact that you don't need a solution, and an understanding that your full presence is a gift.

It's probably the biggest gift you can give to many individuals out there. And when you know that, I feel like we can lean in more with that, can't we get excited about that also?

You don't have to ask permission from anybody to be that kind of person who leans in.

Yeah, I meet with women all the time.

And my prayer, when I'm driving to a meeting or about to meet with someone, as always, I think about Scripture where it says, be slow to speak and quick to listen. So I'm always asking God, like, God, help me to know when to listen and when to speak.

And just this sense of, like, being aware that I'm bringing presence into the space. And what kind of presence am I to bring? You know, I have several questions for you in regards to just practicalities on listening.

How important is question asking to the listening process?

It's huge, actually. When we.

Before we started recording and you had said something about, you know, I have to make sure I. I listen, I stop talking so that I can listen to you and. And what the.

Where I would kind of disagree to a Large extent is that active listening is kind of like a tennis match, like I talked about earlier, where like the ball goes over the net and it comes back and it goes over. So when I need to be, if I'm, if I'm leaning in enough, I should be leaning in with curiosity. And curiosity immediately you think of what's the next.

Like you should be asking questions. So if you don't, if you, if you just listen, listen, listen, listen, listen, there's no questions.

They're gonna be like, hello, knock, knock, anybody there?

But if you are asking pointed questions that stem from the previous things they said and you keep doing that along the way, now they feel like you're on this journey with them. They feel like you're with him, you're following along, versus if you're silent, they're like, are you even there? What are you doing?

Are you thinking of something else? You know, the dry cleaning, the dinner, the. All the things. Right. So questioning, question asking is critical to good active listening.

How important is making room for silence? Because we work a lot with women in groups, in teams, volunteers, women who lead small groups or breakout sessions at conferences.

And I seen so many times where a good dialogue and connection is starting to happen.

But when certain people in the room who are facilitating discussion are uncomfortable with making space for silence, it's almost like they cut off what is about to happen.

You know, I'm a facilitator and I like to do a couple of things. One is the first step in active listening is recognizing the unsaid. So I'm paying attention to the non verbal cues in the room a lot.

That's body language, that's energy level, that's eye contact, that's all the things. So if I'm paying attention to that, I can see if the group is ready to move on.

If the group is ready for a group, the non verbal cues are going to be critical to understand how I can seek later. Because you can't seek to understand until you understand what the non verbals are telling you.

Okay, so that facilitated part is going to be that if I, if I'm seeing like, boy, the dialogue is good, like there's no reason for me to stop now. I could potentially say, I just want to make sure I'm reading this right. Everybody wants to continue, right?

We've reached like a break point, but everybody wants to continue. Yep. Great. Okay. And then move right back. Just continue it right on. Here's where you're at. Let's keep going.

Sometimes you do that because let's say you've agreed ahead of time, you're going to have a midway, midpoint break or whatever point break. And it's like your time. And as a facilitator you're like, I got to keep it on track. But sometimes you can't stop it. You can't fully stop it.

You might have to pause for a second just to check in with everybody and then quickly keep the move. Just remember where you stopped and come right back into the conversation to continue that conversation until everybody is ready.

And then say, okay, I think we've reached a, a formal break point. I think we've gotten some good stuff, we've gotten stuff written down and so I think that's the way to do it. But check in with your people.

Part of that seeking is to look with your eyes, is to hear, hear with the ears. And it's to check in with them to see are they ready to go to the next place.

This might seem like a silly question, but as I was thinking about interviewing you and I'm like, oh, I have a guru on listening. I have someone, don't ask. What's your advice to people who find themselves interrupting a lot?

They know they do it, but part of it is, is that they're so afraid they're going to forget something that they find important that they want to say in that dialogue or conversation. So they just interrupt because they don't trust they'll remember.

I do that sometimes too, especially with my little bit over 50 year old brain. I'm afraid I'm going to forget it. But here's one tip I would give them.

If you're in conversations, just walk around with a journal or something and just take a note. Just write a note down like you're in the middle of.

Even if it pops up, you're listening to them and some pops up, just write it down and then try to continue to re engage again in that kind of real, true, true fruit, full unfettered listening. Because you now you've written it down so you don't have to worry about you're going to forget it.

But if that does happen, and it happens to me sometimes, like a few times in a conversation, I don't walk around with physical paper because I am a cell phone, cell phone person. So I have my notes app open and I'll say, do you mind? I'm just gonna make a real quick note, okay.

And then I put it right back down and then I can continue doing it because I need to come back to it. But I need to continue to be in this conversation and be present. Think of listening like I call it seeking, fertile seeking.

I think of listening like, you are going, you have been wanting to go to see this waterfall. It's a gorgeous waterfall and it's, it's about a three mile hike and you cannot wait. You've been waiting for years to get to that waterfall.

And so you're, you're walking, you're walking, you're like, oh, there's one obstacle, doesn't matter, I gotta get to the waterfall. Walking, another obstacle. Gotta get to the waterfall. The waterfall for you in this.

And then this instance is the truth of what the other person needs. So you are seeking that truth. You want that truth just like you want that waterfall. Think of it that way.

Think of that process, the listing process, in that exact way I am seeking, in order for it to be fertile, I have to keep going. I have to keep going through all the obstacles, through the barriers, through the elevation, through the thing that's making me tired.

Whatever it is, I gotta keep going because it benefits them in a huge way because they know I sought for them, they knew I wanted to be fertile, and they knew I hiked the mountain and I went over the obstacles to get to their truth. And the same goes for you. You get there and you get to the truth.

Now the thing that you want on the other end, I don't care what you tell me, the thing is you're going to get that thing because you took that hike. That makes sense, hopefully that, I mean, that's how I see it. I'm seeking you. I want to know you. I want to get to the bottom of this.

And I don't care how painful it is for me. And actually, even if it kind of challenges my thinking, I want it, I need it. Because I can't get to the other side of you.

I can't get a strong relationship with you. I can't get the sales I want, I can't get employee retention. Whatever the thing is that I want, I can't get it if I don't seek in a fertile way.

It's such a beautiful way to serve people. I think a lot of people who listen to the Kolai podcast genuinely have a desire to love people like Jesus loves them.

And, and they, they desire to do that in the home with their family, if they're teachers, with their students, if they're coaches, with their athletes, if they're boss ladies, with their employees. How do you see active listening as a form of loving our Neighbor or serving our neighbor. How do you.

I mean, I think. I think listening is service. I mean, yeah, if anybody listens to me, even just for a few minutes, they can see that I'm very passionate about this.

And I do believe. I mean, I was called to do this work on listening, and it was definitely by our creator. Absolutely.

And I think it's because this is missing in the world and for you to parse out time from your nutty life. And that's every single one of us, I'm sure, people listening. And me, too.

To spend even just a few minutes with just one person or a group of people, whoever needs us, there's just no better, deeper form of love. And to be with someone potentially in their pain is hard. I was talking to my daughter. She and I are both pretty much empaths.

So people who feel, like, feel a lot of what people's pain is. And I though, obviously I've got many years on her.

And so I've gotten to the point where I'm able to lean in, in a deep way, really try to understand the person and disassociate a little bit of the pain from the need to feel their pain. It's a hard thing to do. But with her, she's still young at it. She's still early in it.

And so for her, she's like, oh, I talked to this person and this father. This person's in the hospice, and this.

Thing is in this and this.

And she's just like, saddled. Saddled by the hard stuff. Right? And what I told her is, listen, I want you to be there for people.

I want you to feel for them, but I need you to disassociate their. All the pain, all the badness from your need to become that thing. Because it could be so easy that you become the thing that you're hearing.

You're around all the time. That's what you hear about compassion and empathy, fatigue a lot. Because they get so into it that it becomes who they are.

And it becomes so learning to disassociate it by saying, I can be present with the people that need me. I can give them the gift of my presence and my understanding, too. And at the same time, I can almost, like, rise from it.

And I'm physically, for those who can't see me, I'm actually rising from this. I'm changing my entire posture, my body language, and I'm saying, okay, I'm kind of rolling off the heaviness.

And at the same time, in my head Clearing a space that says what? How can I be a solution in this, in this moment without also keeping the heaviness on my shoulders?

So I said earlier, this is a lot of brain work, it's a lot of mental work to be this person. And we don't always get it right.

I don't always get it right, but it's just, it's like that, that, that real focus on saying, I'm going to be present, but I can't take in all muck.

And if we think about counselors and we think about, you know, priests and we think about, gosh, all the, you know, psychologists and things like that, they, they, if they rest in the muck too long, they become the muck. And we got to get unstuck, and we got to help others get unstuck.

And the only way to do that is to deeply understand, to remove ourselves from the heaviness and to go about trying to be the solution.

Yeah, it's interesting. As you're talking, I just keep thinking about this idea of almost clarity around what is my role?

Because if my role is to listen, that doesn't mean my role is to be the person's savior or to be the person's healer or to be the person's father or mother, or, you know, engaging and listening is truly serving and loving the person in front of us that God's put in front of us. But it's not taking on a role that isn't ours to take on.

Exactly, exactly. And, and, and you may see that someone's looking to you to give you, to give, for you to give more.

And you have to be honest with what it is you can give. Some of us are already overtaxed on the giving that we've done and that we do. Maybe for our own selves, for our children, for our families.

It could be. We could be dealing with an aging parent. We could be dealing with people who are, who are, you know, in hospice, like my daughter was talking about.

We could be dealing with so many things, and there's only so much as humans we can take. And in some way we just have to say, I'm going to put on the armor as the armor does not mean I can't be vulnerable.

It doesn't mean I'm not listening in a fruitful way, in a deep way to really understand. But I'm going to kind of put on a thin level of armor that does a level of protection of my own heart and soul as I go in.

And to me, what I say is Doing God's work. So as I step on a stage and I talk about this, I say a prayer and it's always about like your spirit, not mine, your words, not mine.

I want the impact to be the impact you want to have, not mine. So it's, I got to remove me, you know, from some of this. And I love what you said. I'm not your savior, but I know who is.

And so help them lean there if they are, if you can have that kind of conversation with them. Because not all the times can we have that conversation depending on their faith journey, depending on all those things, right?

And we know who those people are. We know when we can have those conversations and go there and we know when we can't.

And that's okay because I think most everybody believes in a higher being one way, shape or form. Most everybody.

And so figuring out how you can kind of again take away some of the burden that you have on your shoulders to be that savior for people as you lean in for them, but know that you are giving them love, you are making them feel healed through your full presence.

I have two more questions for you because of course I feel like I can ask you so many things out there, but I have to ask you because I think so many people listening truly desire to serve people in this way. Maybe they don't always feel like they're great at it, but they might be saying right now as they're listening to you share like, sign me up.

I want to get better at it. But what do we do as people to accidentally ruin the safe spaces we hope to create?

I think one of the things you talked about earlier, which is jumping to the solutioning or jumping in the conclusion, kind of like showing that we have the answer and that, that you know, the fastest way we can create, break that up is by breaking down trust and also by like making us seem like we have all the answers, like we are the perfect source of the thing they're looking.

And it's, I think the best way to create this trust which then creates that space, space is to be vulnerable is to show when you failed, when you've fallen down at it. People talk about like people who are self deprecating, where you like laugh at yourself.

And I think it's a good way to continue to have this trust and the safety because you can't have safe spaces without trust. The trust is the foundation of safe spaces.

And so in order to do that, how do your real goal should be like, how do I continue to maintain that Trust. How do I make it stronger? Because the more I keep that intact, the more safety's there.

It's like you talked about earlier with, like, your son all of a sudden saying, now I want your advice. Well, if you jump to giving him advice right off the front, he's not going to want to go there. And he's going to be like, you're all on.

You're like on. You're like, you're in me. And the space is no longer safe. But if you just took the time to just lay in it, sit in it.

Now he's at the place where he's ready. Now he's. He said, yep, yep, she's ready and I'm ready.

I love what you said earlier about, you know, we're so used to getting things fast and the slowing down that we're giving people, it's so rare. It truly. It truly is like handing someone a present.

Like, you're like, I am going to give you my slowing down and my time and my presence and my heart, and I'm here for it. I'm here for whatever you have to, to share. I love that so much. I'm curious.

And my last question for you is when you picture a world where we all started listening to each other, well, what would happen if that happened?

We would all finally get each other. We would. We would all finally feel validated as people. We would all feel worthy of another human's attention.

We would all make connections that we never were able to make before. And those are soft things I just said. And I get that.

But all the things I just said lead to the hard things, the hard numbers, the hard quantitative things that we can point to at success, success factors. We can point to those after we get to the things I just talked about.

When we actualize us, our own selves as humans, I think we get there when the world starts to really listen to one another in a way, we need to really be heard.

Well, I don't know if there's ever been a time like the time we're in where we would all benefit by beginning to listen well to one another.

So I appreciate everything that God's doing through you for making time today to share your precious time and to encourage us to truly love and serve each other by listening well. So thank you so much, Heather, for being with us today.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart. Thank you so much for having me.

Man, I don't know about you, but I loved this interview so much. I love that Heather lays out some really practical things that we can do to become better listeners.

But I also love the vision that she left us with at the end of our time together.

Imagine a world where you feel heard and seen and known and where your neighbor and your friends and your family members and your co workers and the people that you see all around you who are hurting and who feel ignored and forgotten. Imagine if we all felt heard and seen and known.

Imagine what that would do to the polarization that we're experiencing right now, to the division, to the church, to individuals who are struggling with feeling like they should even be here at all. It is so interesting to listen to Heather share about the power of listening. I hope you were inspired to up your game. I know I was.

I love that she challenged us that it requires a slowing down, that we actually just sit in a space with another human and we slow down and what a gift that is.

I hope that you keep colliding with Jesus and the more that you do, the more that you're inspired by his example to meet, meet each person where they're at and stand right there present with them. He does that so beautifully. He wants to do that with you. And he also calls us to do it with others.

So keep colliding, friend, and we'll catch you next week.