Today, we're diving into the art of listening with our guest, Mark Vincent, a process consulting pioneer. Mark shares insights on how truly understanding others can pave the way for better business continuity and succession planning. He emphasizes that listening is not just about hearing words; it involves engaging fully and asking the right questions to draw out deeper insights. We discuss how effective listening fosters ownership and accountability within teams, transforming the way organizations operate. Join us as we explore the vital role of listening in achieving unstoppable success and how it can lead to meaningful collaboration and innovation.

Unstoppable Success welcomes Mark Vincent, a distinguished leader in process consulting, to share insights on the crucial role of listening in business. The episode dives into the complexities of listening, emphasizing that it is not merely about hearing words but involves a deeper understanding of emotional cues and non-verbal communication. Mark highlights the challenges many face in truly listening, often distracted by their thoughts and responses. He explains how effective listening fosters engagement and collaboration, allowing individuals to take ownership of their solutions rather than relying solely on consultants. By discussing Edgar Schein's foundational work in process consulting, Mark illustrates how asking the right questions can lead to meaningful problem-solving and a greater commitment to change. The conversation culminates in an exploration of the Society for Process Consulting, which Mark founded to professionalize this essential competency, encouraging leaders to enhance their listening skills as a pathway to success.

Takeaways:

• Listening is a complex skill that requires being present and fully engaged with the speaker.
• Effective listening fosters ownership and accountability, empowering individuals to solve their own problems.
• Curiosity is essential in leadership; asking questions opens doors to innovation and better solutions.
• Transformative leadership involves shifting focus from speaking to listening and facilitating dialogue.
• Distractions during conversations hinder true understanding; we must learn to embrace silence and patience.
• Building a culture of inquiry allows for creative solutions and deeper engagement among team members.

Links referenced in this episode:

• markelvincent.com

Foreign.

Well, hello everybody, and welcome to another amazing episode of Unstoppable Success, the podcast where we hear from amazing leaders, humans, business professionals, all about how they became unstoppable.

Their tips, their wisdom, all things that can help you continue and to be unstoppable success.

And so today I want to welcome Mark Vincent as our guest.

And let me tell you a little bit about Mark.

He partners with accomplished leaders to pave a road through the complexity of business continuity and succession.

It'd be great if I could speak this morning.

Mark has established Design Group International, the Society for Process Consulting, and the Maestro Level Leaders.

A process consulting pioneer and systems convener, he is an author and contributor across various channels, as well as a frequent presenter.

And his latest book, Listening, Helping Learning, lays out the core competencies of process consulting and a roadmap to partner with his clients.

Mark, welcome.

I love the fact that you have a whole book on listening.

No, thank you, Jacqueline.

So this conversation.

So, Mark, you know, I'm really curious.

How, how has, how has first of all, like the book come about and like, take me up to this journey because, you know, again, listening is, I, you know, we just shared.

Listening is something that I think is, you know, we all talk about it, but I actually think it's harder to do than people think.

Oh, yeah, it is.

Listening takes work and it takes being present and it takes being conscious.

You can look like you're listening and be kind of elsewhere in your brain, but then you're not listening.

You're not going to retain things.

And listening isn't just hearing words.

It's perceiving.

It's facing, taking in visual information and experiential information.

You know, what's the temperature of this person's temperament and that kind of thing.

So that it's hard work and it's a, it's a big discipline to do that.

And, you know, the social scientists tell us it's the majority communication isn't how well you speak or how passionately you speak.

It's how well you listen and retain information so that your responses can show that you are engaged with the people that are on the other side of the table or at the other end of the couch or across the restaurant table from you.

So the, the real genesis of a lot of this goes back to Edgar Schein.

If we're talking about listening, particularly in a leadership context or a business context.

Edgar Schein was an MIT Prof.

So up your way, up in your neck of the woods.

And he was starting out really in not just Teaching, but working in large manufacturing and helping to refine processes that, that were not working right.

And the old way of doing this is that you would listen a little bit, just to listen for what?

What's the problem?

And now I'm going to tell you what the solution is.

So it's a hook that you're looking for when you're a subject matter expert.

And we all need subject matter experts.

We need people who know their field really well.

But when you're dealing with a process, you often don't know what the problem is right away.

And the person telling you doesn't know what the problem is.

That's why they're checking with you.

So now you have to figure things out.

And that requires conversation.

And if they're going to fix things that they're responsible for, they have to own it.

Well, adults own things that they, they've decided they want to do.

How do they decide they're a part of the problem solving?

How do they feel like there are problems, a part of the problem solving?

Somebody's listening to them, somebody's curious, somebody's asking them questions.

And what Edgar Schein found out is if he asked questions like what else did you try?

Or what else did you think about trying?

Or what do you think would happen if we did X or Y or Z?

Or was there any other idea that was left out and would just draw people out to own their ideas, they were actually committed to taking their next steps and defining solutions as opposed to blaming the consultant.

Like, we tried it, it didn't work, you know, so they would have more grit in their next steps.

So he began to apply this in all kinds of situations and started consulting with human service organizations and healthcare organizations, some NGOs, and found that if you listen and ask questions that draw out more comments and then people actually start listening themselves, they start listening to the problem.

So not everybody's listening.

Everybody's listening to this thing that they're examining together.

They're facing the work and then they own their stuff.

So my own work with this was saying, okay, now that in the academy, like at MIT and Edgar Schein's work and his extensive consultation, you have data for how this works, how do we turn this into a field, how we turn this into a profession where people will be process consultants, not just having that in their toolbox, they would actually be this kind of a person.

This would be what they lead, this would be the thing they brought into their profession.

So out of that, the Society for Process Consulting was established, which provides A professional credential for this approach.

And along the way we did some extensive work to say, what are the core competencies?

How do we recognize when it's being done and being done well, and how do we evaluate it and keep learning and bring it to an art form?

And what was cool was that of course listening is the first of those competencies.

You have to listen so well that people are saying, you just said it better than I did.

When you finally play it back, that's exactly it.

Or yes, and you got that.

Yes.

Now they're engaged and you can begin to move toward helping.

But in this case, helping isn't me helping you.

If you're the client, it's us co creating what help looks like.

So it's not something I perform as a consultant, I've helped you get into a listening mode as well.

So now we've co created it.

So listening in that level of depth continues forward.

It doesn't end because we're helping now.

So we stop listening.

We keep listening.

But it's joint.

No, it is listening for the elements of an architecture for the process that will actually engage.

And then you start to have a trusted relationship because there's dialogue and it's a, it's a powerful discipline and it sounds easy and it's hard work.

You have to be very mindful, you have to be very present.

You have to deal with your own technical term here, frap, in order to be able to be present with other people and not be, you know, yin yanging with your brain.

So that's a little bit of the background.

Okay, so you said.

First of all, that is absolutely amazing.

And one thing.

Well, there's a couple comments I want to share listeners, because how many times.

And, and you have to be conscious about this, you know, listening to somebody speak.

How many times as you just said, the stuff that's going in your brain because you're thinking, right?

You're thinking about, oh, I should, oh, I could.

But you know, you actually have to stop thinking, thinking in your brain about what comments and just intently listen.

Because then after that, you know, there may be a pause and it's okay, but then you can actually articulate and even, you know, create a better cohesive sentence versus saying oh, I understand that.

Like, yeah, I love that you brought that up.

Because the difference here is not thinking.

It's.

It's a word that's kind of a made up word here.

It's a wearing.

Yeah, it's facing.

It's embracing the moment with your eyes and with your body to be aware of the person or of the group and, and to let the thoughts come as they wrap up.

Because if I start engaging the thought, I'm doing it out of a dimension or a little facet of what they're saying, not the whole thing.

And there's a whole mess of people out there that it takes them a while to wind up to what they're really trying to say if they process out loud.

Right.

So I need to hear it all to get really what they're saying at the end.

And then there are others that can't express quickly, don't express quickly because they want the thought to come out complete.

And so they're going to have slower speech.

And they might start with silence rather than end with silence in order to get to the thought.

Well, I can't get distracted during that time.

I have to let what I'm aware of become more clues to better understand the person more quickly.

And that's what you try to use your brain for as opposed to.

Oh, I've got a story about that too.

Right.

And that takes practice, but it's a powerful result as you get more practice.

At it, you know, and you know what you just said, it's, it's such a powerful result and, and practicing it.

And I would say one of the things that you shared as you were, you know, talking about even, you know, having people understand a, you know, you know, the process when there is a bottleneck or a problem, to listen to the whole thing, to get people engaged.

Listening and asking questions will help you, will help any person be, you know, have better success with people or in business when they can ask the questions, listen and not jump to solutions.

But get people, as you said, get their buy in, get them to actually take ownership of, of the solution and then they're going to go in with excitement because they are going to have that ownership of it.

Yeah, right.

If they don't own it, then they're asking me to persuade them, prove that what your idea is will work.

Who else does this?

How would you, you know, put.

How would you implement this?

This is the kind of things that people will ask.

Well, now that has me talking.

I'm not listening anymore.

I am, I'm now speaking.

I'm trying to persuade.

I'm searching for data.

I'm now doing their work.

Their work is to be able to own their steps, to be committed to those steps, to take responsibility, to be accountable.

If they want me to do the work, then I'm not a consultant in that instance, I am actually now moving into being a contractor.

The contracting work is good, that's fine.

But if I'm there to help them solve a problem and I end up doing their work, then they didn't solve their problem.

They're not going to be better equipped to solve the next one.

So it is a tough part of the discipline, but one of the rewarding aspects is to get non anxious enough.

Excuse me.

That's all right.

Get to be non anxious enough to not have to answer the question I'm asked, but to be able to move to the questions that they are asking that are underneath those questions.

Because there's an issue that put us in the conversation in the first place.

If I'm listening, well, I can keep returning to the important conversation and not get caught up in the distracting ones that in the end become rather expensive.

Because everybody's on the clock here.

If it's an organization and they need to get after their work.

And so I can with, without anxiousness, keep calling them back if I'm paying attention, if I'm not paying attention and it's about me, then I'm going to try to persuade them and sell them and, and show how expert I am.

You know, something that you just said, I think is, again, this is really important and I, and I want to share this.

This is a little story, a little, again a little insight into learning a little bit of, you know, something that I did that was a, aha moment for me that made a switch.

And that is if you are, if people are asking the questions right, it takes.

And as you said, you know, people in that anxiousness will actually want to almost like more, more in a sense pontificate their ideas or share share versus ask, ask, ask.

I would also even say it is an insecurity.

Yes, it's a big insecurity.

So this was a huge lesson for me.

I will never forget.

I was sick sitting at a round table.

I was new to a company.

I was.

I knew nobody, everybody else knew people.

I was like the odd, odd girl out, so to speak, or odd man out.

And very insecure in my skin at the moment.

And I remember somebody asked a question and instead of me listening, I just pontificated what I did.

Like I just had to share I'm this I'm.

And almost like to in a way of almost proving my greatness, which is not at all great.

That's asshole.

Sorry.

Right.

Like, you know, and instead it's, you know, and a huge lesson was, oh, that wasn't right.

Jaclyn, you need to listen.

Listen and then ask questions and.

And then maybe drip in some of the things that, you know.

But the biggest, you know, you know, the best leaders, right, don't talk.

They listen and they write.

The smartest person at the table is not the person who's talking.

It's a person.

And you described that as a transformative moment for yourself, the way you just played that story out.

And I. I would suggest that culturally, in.

Particularly in the North American business scene, people are pressured to be performative.

Show that, you know, stuff.

Show what you can do.

Compete, win.

Right?

You gotta be visible.

Well, when we are in a learning mode early in career, that can work, okay?

Because we're learning, you know, and we are competing.

Once we're moving into more of a formal leadership role where we're now responsible for an organization and people, our performance is no longer tied to our expertise.

So if you come up, like through a marketing vertical, when you now are responsible for the whole P and L of a company, it's not about your marketing performance anymore.

In fact, a few weeks in the C suite, you won't be the most expert marketer for the company anymore because you're not going to all these other meetings.

And, you know, you're responsible for things you're not even the expert in.

So what helps you here?

Continuing to learn.

That means you ask questions, you write things down.

Because if you keep going to your old hammer and nails and saying, marketing, marketing, marketing, marketing, or R D, R D, R D. And everything has an R and D answer, and look how smart I am.

And I've got to win and I've got to have the answers.

And now you've stopped learning.

So the very thing that got you to success, you're shutting down.

What got you to that success was learning and becoming an expert in something.

So now you got to become an expert in leadership, which means a lot more question asking, a lot more writing down, a lot more connecting dots.

So I.

That.

It's a.

It's an important turning point in a career.

And it sounds like you had that experience.

It's like, ah, aha.

I have to.

I have to not just talk about me.

I've got to ask these questions.

Yeah.

And for me, you know, that moment was what actually came out of it for me was I. I remember walking away from that roundtable and I was like, God, I didn't.

That was.

That didn't feel right.

And then I, you know, I think I listened to or reread a book and it was like, oh, you know, remember, you have to be the listener.

You know, remember you learn from the people that are smarter than you.

You know, you always want to.

Again, Dale Carnegie said it beautifully, right?

You always want to hire people who are smarter than you.

And.

And it is so you can learn from them and help them rise up.

And I just remember thinking, okay, we need to flip the switch.

Yeah, good for you.

It is a switch deflect.

It really is.

It's a continuation of learning, but it's.

I often say you're.

You're going from rising vertically to moving horizontally.

So how do you do that?

It's new muscles.

It's a new process.

You just keep doing what you've done.

You learn, you.

You bring the questions and assume you don't know, which is a quicker way to know something is to start with, I don't know.

Right.

And actually, you know, on the Pot, the podcast actually, that's getting released today is the 24th of July.

In the book Lead It Like Lasso, Nick Coniglio, he's one of the authors, and he shared that he realized that when he.

One of the ways he became a better leader was when he started admitting that he didn't have all the answers and he started asking questions.

And as you were just sharing, right?

Like when you can ask the questions and be a learner and not an as.

As I knew, like, don't be a know it all.

It's amazing what comes out.

Right?

Innovation and differentiation and marketplace acceleration.

All these things we say we want to do.

They start with inquiry, not with, I already have the answers.

I already have the answers.

Puts you into managing an ever smaller set of resources because over time, what we know serves us less well.

You know, few of us are going out and buying ipods these days as an example, right?

So we carry all that on our phone now.

So that came out of innovation.

Not assuming the way we did it would be the way we will continue to do it.

And we can have hundreds of those kinds of examples.

It comes from the.

The stuff that doesn't exist yet that will drive future value for the enterprises we're in will come from our curiosity, not from what we know.

Now.

That I think being able to be curious and what you just said, I think is so important.

You know, the.

The thing that I always hear that drives me crazy is hearing the words.

Well, that's because that's how we do it.

Right?

Because now you.

It might not be the best way.

Yes.

It might be the way that you've done it all, all the time.

But maybe there might be a better way.

Might be a better way.

But imagine being a newbie in the organization.

You've just been told that, which means my ideas aren't welcome.

And you're also not going to tell me how it is that you arrived at this method.

So I'm outside.

Either way, I can't open this door because you're behind a locked door, not revealing the story about how you arrived at this value.

So I can contribute to it.

And I'm trying to show you my commitment by bringing an idea and you're throwing that out right away.

So I've just had the door slammed in my face in two different directions when that happens.

And listeners, I think that's a really key thing you have to think about in your business and yourselves and your companies.

Like, are you slamming doors on people inadvertently and squashing curiosity and creativity, or are you embracing and letting people actually start thinking outside the box and maybe coming up with a better way?

Let people think and come up with solutions or changes to something and let them just let them tell you how it could be better.

We can, we can go right back, circle back to the curiosity factor because a lot of times so when someone's coming with an idea, they'll do it in the form of a question.

They'll say, can you tell me more about this?

Or I was wondering if we could, you know, look at this.

You know, they're coming with a, an openness and a softness much more than a declaration.

Right.

So I'm bringing curiosity if the door slammed in my face.

Now we are reinforcing that curiosity inquiry is not welcome.

And that means culturally we are reinforcing a come with what you know and with what is don't rock the boat, don't make the changes.

Why are you always changing everything?

That kind of stuff.

So now the talented curiosity driven creatives are going to go elsewhere to where they are welcome and they're, they're going to start becoming quiet because what they are bringing isn't welcome.

So if we're not careful, we reinforce the closeness to curiosity.

No matter what our mission statement says, if we are slamming the door in that way.

You know something, you just, you, when you just said the mission statement, it just, it was like, you know what?

And it's really true that you're as a business really think and are your actions aligned with that mission and do you actually practice what the mission is statement?

It is do, says, does and whatnot.

And if it doesn't you need to rewrite that or change your, think about changing your PR practices.

And if you're, if, if there is not an alignment there, and I'm just going to bring it right back, Start listening to the people that are in your fold, within your company and ask them to help you rewrite that mission and let them get buy in.

Yeah, because buy in is what makes it live.

Yeah, right, right.

Because then they're going to, they're going to have better ownership of it and when it becomes a collaboration again.

It'S.

Going to help make everybody really work better together.

That's right.

I love it.

You know, Mark, I could talk to you about this forever because I think this is such an important topic and I think that, you know, listeners, I think you'll understand, you know, and I'm hoping that, you know, you get the book, you know, listening Helping Learning.

Listening is again, it is a, it is a, it's.

We do it.

We all, we all do it.

But we, but are we doing it well?

And are we really, really listening or are we just hearing the word but.

Not trying to look like we're listening?

Right, right, right.

So Mark, what, what, what is next for you courses?

Any speaking?

Sure.

Well, the Society for Process Consulting offers a number of courses and there is one in particular on the core competencies of process consulting.

Listening is being at the centerpiece of that.

And so that's one place people can go and sign up for a course and be on their way to a professional credential.

I occasionally have people that say, Mark, well, I really like to learn from you.

Can we do something where I engage you to help me do this and I'm able to do that.

I sometimes will bring a group together on kind of on our own schedule.

I have one just about to start and it's also can be used as a way to move toward that professional credential because we got, we set it up where now that others are teaching it, I could, because I was the writer of the curriculum, I can do some private ways of doing that.

And anybody who wants to correspond with me about that can just go to markelvincent.com that the Middle initial needs to be there.

You'll get Vin Diesel.

He and I share the same given name.

So that, that doesn't, people can't find me.

They get him, another bald headed, more muscular man.

But so markelvincent.com then we can correspond about that if that's of interest.

I continue to do a fair bit of speaking and training around this and what I really like to do is working with organizations who want some kind of training, as opposed to bringing a canned speech.

I like to say, what are the goals of this thing?

Let's tailor something that really helps you deliver what you need in your culture with the people that, that will be there.

And you can walk out saying, this is one of the best events we've ever had.

So I, I really like getting into the, the grist of putting that event together.

When groups want to do that, that's a real delight.

Most of what I do now is work with senior leaders who are looking at some kind of business continuity and succession.

I found that in process consulting.

It's one of the highest art forms.

If it's an art where so many things can go wrong, organizations are houses of cards, and all it takes is an ego that's out of whack or a black swan event or something.

You didn't anticipate a health scare.

Anything can just bring that future value down.

We're in business not for the current value.

We're in business for the future value.

Next year and the year after that, and seeing share prices rise, making more of an impact, doing more of our mission.

And if it's going to now be in the hands of somebody else, there's so many things we're afraid of or they're afraid of that can bring that down.

So I'm usually almost all of my clients now walking with them, their board, maybe family members through those years of bringing that change about, and then that means I can connect them.

If they don't have those relationships with estate attorneys and financial planners and business evaluators, those are all technical things that are needed and it needs to be well mapped at the right time.

What I am doing is being a thought partner to those leaders at this time where they're going to do this only once, they're going to do this.

Well, they, but they've never done it before, and they, they want to come through it without scars.

They actually want.

The phrase I love is they want to slingshot their successor into the future.

People who care about that don't want obstacles in their way, don't want the organization to go down into a, you know, trough for two years before it can do anything.

Because almost all these succession events don't achieve the intended value.

Just like mergers and acquisitions don't.

We have to be as planful about these moments as when we launch the businesses.

So getting to be with them in those moments is a delight.

And that's become the centerpiece of what I do.

That's that's really fantastic.

I absolutely love that.

All right, so, listeners, do me a favor.

I want you to go to marklvincent.com and connect with Mark.

Get the credential.

Go start getting those credentials.

I actually may head over there myself.

And then I want you to do me another favor.

I want you to hit subscribe.

And then I would love for you to also share this episode with any of your business colleagues, because I know that they could learn a lot from hearing about listening in the and how important it is and also learning a lot more from Mark.

So thank you all for listening.

I'm Jacqueline Schuminger.

This is unstoppable success.

And thank you, Mark, for being an amazing guest.

My pleasure.