The Listening Shift

Janie van Hool understands both speaking and listening profoundly. She began her career as a professional actor, training at The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art before embarking on 12 years of work in the theatre, in TV, as a voiceover artist and conference presenter. She went on to gain an MA in Voice and researched for an MSc in Performance Psychology. The combination of her academic research together with her experience as a performer has given her a unique perspective on how to articulate messages with confidence and skill, and informed her work as a coach, advisor and skills teacher to business leaders. Over the last 20 years she has developed leaders in a wide range of organizations, from mining in Australia to investment banking in New York and everything in between. She has crafted tactics, strategies, frameworks and tools to enable leaders to inspire others through impact, influence, presentation, storytelling and connection. Her fascination with how people communicate has helped countless leaders make a difference to themselves personally, and to the people they lead. More recently she has volunteered as a listener with Samaritans – a UK charity dedicated to listening to people in distress. This has helped her complete the circle of communication insights that have been her life’s work, by recognizing fully the incredible power of being heard. Her first book – The Impact and Presence Pocketbook - was published in 2004.'

Table of Contents

Foreword:

A high-profile business leader – currently to be agreed, but potential names include Dame Carolyn McCall, Richard Hytner and the new CEO (to be confirmed) of Samaritans, among others.

Prologue:

My journey as a listener…how it’s been shaped in the worlds of theatre, business and charity volunteering and what that insight offers to leaders.

Note to Reader:

How to ‘listen’ to this book (there will be suggested recordings to start each chapter as a ‘setting the scene’ listening exercise)

Chapters:

1. Get Your Shift Together – Why Listen?

- What’s the problem?

- The business of listening (environmental factors)

- What’s possible if you make the shift?

- What’s the process needed to achieve results

2. Shift work - How to Listen to Your Organisation

- The Listening Audit

- Listening Modalities

- Running listening meetings

- Managing Your Presentations

- Listening virtually

3. ‘You’ve got shift to do!’ - How to Listen to Your People

- Managing your impact as a listener

- Setting your intention

- Empathy mapping

- A listening methodology to live by

- Inclusion and the big conversations

- Timed reviews – how to keep getting better

4. Give a Shift - Helping Your Listeners Listen to you

- The music of talking (Voice, language and metaphor)

- Learning to dance (proxemics, body language and what happens online)

- How to structure your communication for easy listening

- The story behind the story – emotional engagement and why it matters

- Timing

5. Shift Happens– What to Expect

- How to communicate with discipline and practice

- Connecting and disconnecting rituals

- Dealing with what you hear

- A vision for the future

End Matter:

Further resources – workshops, coaching support, listening audit.