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Bradley James Davies

@bradleyjamesdavies

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I teach leaders and teams how to leverage the one thing that changes everything: Next-Level Listening™.

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When it comes to preambles, more is not merrier.

By preamble, I mean everything we say before we get to the question itself. The context, the caveats, the recap, the “When I was your age…”, the wind-up before the pitch.

My go-to flavor of preamble? The pep talk.

Way too often, I channel my inner William Wallace, and before I know it, I’m a few minutes into a battlefield motivational speech. It feels so helpful.

But it isn’t.

I am learning that my loved ones and clients are far better served by my inquiry rather than any inspiration I can muster up. By my listening rather than my talking.

So the next time you feel a preamble coming on, try to skip the wind-up and offer the floor to your friends, loved ones, colleagues, and even strangers to share more.

Every word you cut from your preamble is a word handed back to the speaker, a gift that lets them express themselves and be more deeply understood, for both their benefit and yours.

#listening #nextlevellistening by @bradleyjamesdavies

Hope you enjoy and find helpful this short excerpt from my upcoming book, Next-Level Listening: How to Make More Money, Have Better Sex, Thrive in Your Relationships, Connect With Your Kids, Elevate Your Leadership, Win the Next Election, & Survive the Zombie Apocalypse.

Opt in for more sneak peeks at bradleyjamesdavies.com

BJD

p.s. Quick question: Does anyone get the sweater weather reference, or should it die on the editing room floor? 🙃

#listening #nextlevellistening by @bradleyjamesdavies

Mirroring is magic.

Mirroring is the listening practice of repeating the speaker’s language back to them. Their words as spoken, verbatim.

I first learned about mirroring from Chris Voss’s book, Never Split the Difference, but paid little attention until I connected the dots with what I was being taught as a professional listener at Georgetown University: listen for clue-laden language, words that make you want to know more.

For my fellow Gen Xers out there, Arsenio Hall would have defined clue-laden language as “things that make you go hmmmmmm.” Words like “detest,” “I’m over it,” or “might be time to quit.”

Hear “might be time to quit”? Mirror it back. “Time to quit?”

That’s it. That’s the whole mirroring move.

Mirroring’s main win? The speaker stays in the driver’s seat. Why? Because mirroring keeps our biases in check.

Our brains are meaning-making machines. We hear “time to quit,” and our brains immediately flood our conscious thoughts with past experiences of quitting. Just like that, our brain might put us on a path to offer a pep talk about the merits of sticking it out. All the while, it may cut us off from other ways to think about quitting. Retiring? Choosing a new path? Letting go of what isn’t working? The speaker could have meant any of these, and others.

By mirroring, we keep the speaker at the wheel of the conversation while we ride shotgun.

Mirroring can admittedly feel awkward. But awkwardness aside, it works. So give it a try.

But beware of overdoing it. Mirroring is like salt in a dish. A little enhances the conversation. Too much spoils the dish. Mirroring is magic, but used too often, it can shut down a conversation (especially with teenagers) faster than you can say abracadabra.

Want to learn more about listening? Follow along for excerpts from my new book, Next-Level Listening: How to Make More Money, Have Better Sex, Thrive in Your Relationships, Connect with Your Kids, Elevate Your Leadership, Win the Next Election, & Survive the Zombie Apocalypse.

More at bradleyjamesdavies.com.

#listening by @bradleyjamesdavies

Want to level up your listening immediately?

Stop interrupting.

Easier said than done. I should know, as I failed at it miserably for decades.

The first step is noticing how often we do it.

We interrupt to agree, to disagree, to relate, to rescue, to say the funny thing, to say the not-so-funny thing, and on and on.

Much of the time we interrupt with good intentions. Almost all of the time, we don’t even notice we’re doing it.

So start with noticing it in yourself and those around you. From there, flex with all of your might to start doing it less often.

The wins will be remarkable, at work and at home.

Swipe through to learn more about the power of not interrupting, plus a sneak peek from my next book, Next-Level Listening.

#listening by @bradleyjamesdavies

#listening by @bradleyjamesdavies

The superlative. Fancy talk for what Dr. Seuss might define as:

The biggest and best, more than all of the rest; the finest, the greatest, the mostest; the pick of the litter, the cream of the crop, the top top tippity-top!

And, oh, the places the superlative goes!

It shows up when you’re getting to know your daughter’s new “friend”: “Who’s your favorite teacher?”

It frequents job interview after job interview: “Tell me about your biggest challenge.”

It even comes out to play on first dates: “What’s your most embarrassing moment?”

Wherever you go, you will often find the superlative there with you.

Beware, it’s an insidious enemy to good conversation camouflaged as a friend.

#listening by @bradleyjamesdavies

Anyone else out there guilty of this?

#listening by @bradleyjamesdavies

Our teachers meant well. Unfortunately, they were still wrong.

Sadly, stupid questions are here to stay. But structurally bad questions? Those we can fix.

The questions we ask shape the answers we get, and most of us are sabotaging ours without knowing it.

Swipe for fixes, plus an example of an ideal question, courtesy of my favorite 80s sitcom kid.

#listening by @bradleyjamesdavies

High-quality questions lead to high-quality conversations.

What’s your anatomy of a high-quality question?

#listening by @bradleyjamesdavies

A rabbit, a turtle, and a snail walk into a brain…

Sounds like the start of a bad joke. It’s actually the reason listening well is so hard.

We think up to 10x faster than we listen and up to 20x faster than we speak. That cognitive gap is what I call the Distraction Delta.

In plain terms, we think like rabbits, listen like turtles, and speak like snails.

The bad news is that while the rabbit waits on the snail, it wanders off, greatly compromising our ability to truly listen to our partners, kids, teams, families, and friends.

The good news? We can outsmart our rabbit brains.

Swipe through for the short version. For the full chapter, opt in to Whisper at bradleyjamesdavies.com, and I’ll send you a sneak peek of “The Distraction Delta.”

Who in your life deserves more of your full attention this week? by @bradleyjamesdavies

From AV to CB…and lots of places in between. @jeremyaphillips by @bradleyjamesdavies

More love for Peace Listens.

Around the world, at our dinner tables, across cubicles, in our neighborhoods, classrooms, boardrooms, bedrooms…

Give it a try today. Tomorrow, too. And the day after that. You’ll be amazed at what happens.

🕊️🫂🌍,

BJD by @bradleyjamesdavies