This Is Woman's Work with Nicole Kalil - How To Listen with Emily Kasriel | 321

Episode Date: June 25, 2025

We live in a world that talks over people instead of listening to them. Debate has replaced understanding. Volume gets rewarded over vulnerability. And somehow, we’ve confused interrupting with intelligence. In this episode, we’re flipping the script. Because deep listening—the kind that transforms relationships, diffuses conflict, and actually builds connection—isn’t soft. It’s a power skill. A leadership skill. A humanity-saving skill. And there’s no one better to guide us through the how than today’s guest… Our guide today is Emily Kasriel, award-winning journalist, former BBC executive, and creator of the Deep Listening approach. With two decades of media experience, a role as Senior Visiting Research Fellow at King’s College London, and a new book (Deep Listening: Transform Your Relationships with Family, Friends and Foes), Emily is here to show us how to stop talking... and actually hear each other. Listening—truly listening—isn’t passive. It’s active, intentional, and strong as hell. And in a culture that values being loud over being present, choosing to listen might just be the most rebellious, relationship-healing thing we can do. Connect with Emily:  Website: https://www.emilykasriel.com/  Book: https://harpercollins.co.uk/products/deep-listening-transform-your-relationships-with-family-friends-and-foes-emily-kasriel?variant=41459770884174 LI: https://www.linkedin.com/in/emilykasriel/ Related Podcast Episodes: The Icelandic Art of Intuition with Hrund Gunnsteinsdóttir | 307 The Power of Conscious Connection with Talia Fox | 263 Gentleness: Cultivating Compassion for Yourself and Others with Courtney Carver | 282 Share the Love: If you found this episode insightful, please share it with a friend, tag us on social media, and leave a review on your favorite podcast platform! 🔗 Subscribe & Review:Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Visit square.ca to get started. I am Nicole Kalil and you're listening to the This is Woman's Work podcast where together we're redefining what it means, what it looks and feels like to be doing woman's work in the world today. And today we're going to talk about listening. And yes, I'm fully aware of the irony, but of all the skills we're losing at an alarming rate, listening might be the most endangered.

And I'm not talking about how our kids never listen or how certain people in our lives seem to have selective hearing. I'm talking about real deep listening. The kind where you engage with not just your ears, but your brain, your body, your heart, and your energy. Where you don't interrupt or internally rehearse your response.

Where you don't try to fix or prove or win. Where the other person actually feels heard and seen. Because one of the things that people want most is to feel understood, and most of us don't. Maybe because we've never been taught how to really listen, or we don't value it, or we're too busy talking, scrolling, or mentally replying to emails while somebody tries to tell us something deeply personal. In my opinion, it's the reason why so many of us feel lonely, disconnected, and divided.

We're technically more connected than ever and somehow feel more isolated. We have more access to information than ever before and somehow less common ground. We live in a culture that prioritizes talking over listening, debating over understanding, and charisma over empathy. We fill space with words. We try to convince, correct, or bulldoze

rather than asking genuine questions, practicing curiosity, or I don't know, shutting our pie holes long enough to actually listen to someone else. And it scares the absolute shit out of me. So today we're gonna learn how to listen. And then we're gonna practice with each other, with our kids, and with the people

we disagree with. Because I believe it's essential to our mental, emotional, and spiritual health. Maybe even our survival. And there is no one better to guide us through the how than today's guest. Emily Casreal has had a distinguished career at the BBC for over two decades as an award-winning journalist, editor, and media exec. But what brought her to this conversation is her deep commitment to, well, deep listening. She's developed the deep listening approach as a senior visiting research fellow at King's College Policy Institute in London, blending research with real-world

experience as an accredited executive coach and workplace mediator. Her new book, Deep Listening, Transform Your Relationships with Family, Friends, and Foes, gets to the heart of what so many of us are missing and craving in our relationships today. Emily, thank you for being our guest, and I'm gonna start by practicing my own listening skills right now

and ask you to share some of the learnings from your study of over a thousand people across 119 countries. So what have you learned about deep listening? Well, I think that a lot of people feel quite hesitant to really listen. They don't know how, and especially if people feel differently.

So for this big project, we recruited people from all over the world and the top four countries represented, just to give you a sense, were Malaysia, the UK, New Zealand, and Iran. A friend of mine runs the BBC Persian Service, so helped recruit those people. And so it was a really diverse bunch of people,

but we found that when they learned how to deeply listen, and this was compared to a control group because we work with academics, that people felt more open, more connected, and more able to re-examine their own attitudes, which was really exciting. It kind of plays to this belief that I think many of us have that if we want to receive something the best way to do that is to give it, right? So if we practice deep listening, what I'm hearing you say is the outcome is that we feel more open to share and to be authentic and transparent in our communication when we practice deep listening.

Am I understanding that correctly? Yeah, I mean, I think the very process of being curious about someone else's story, because so often we just assume that we already know. So we just preload our verbal gun with ammunition ready to fire rather than being truly open. But when we do step back and we honestly and authentically listen to them with a curiosity to understand, they say things which increase our empathy and we feel more connected to them

because we understand them more fully. Okay. So I guess share with us what the difference is between deep listening and what we're probably doing in our day-to-day lives. Well, so many of us do lip service listening, even if, for example, we might have been on active listening courses. So I listen to you and say, yeah, yeah, I get it, I understand, so let me maybe pick up one word of what you said. Yeah, yeah, I get it, and now let me tell you how to let me help you let me fix you, as you said earlier, let me solve your problem for you, especially with our kids. We like to think that that's our role to solve their problem. We aren't really taking on board not only what the

other person is saying, but also their feelings and what they are not saying, but they're communicating to us if only we could truly listen. If one way to think about it, and this is something that Theodore Wright came up with, who was a student of Sigmund Freud, he said, we can listen with our third ear. And I like to think of our third ear being somewhat, you know, near our heart.

So we're not just listening with our intellectual brain, but we're intuiting what's really going on for the other person. And then, after leaving an appropriate degree of silence, we have a go at summing up the essential core of what the person has said, what they have not said, and also of their emotions. And we offer it back with humility. So I don't say, Nicole, oh, I get it. What you're saying is a BNC. We rather say, I'm sensing that for you, this interview is something you've half done all the time and yet it's a slightly different interview

in the space of listening. Is that right? Okay. So you mentioned the word silence and I think that that's hard for many of us. I'll be transparent. I often find listening, but thinking about how to respond, or what I'm gonna say, and that to me

is one of my biggest barriers to deeply listening. How do we practice allowing for silence? How do we, I don't know if leverage is the right word, but how do we get comfortable with silence and what part does it play in deep listening? Silence plays a huge part for somebody who used to be a serial interrupter and at many times, especially when I feel so strongly that I'm right, it's still an interrupter. Silence is truly hard. And many of us also fear an awkward silence. We feel we're helping someone by completing their sentence for them,

by filling in the gaps, by helping them to articulate something that they're struggling for words. But in doing so, what we're effectively saying is what I'm about to say is more important than what you're about to think. Because when we give people a rich, spacious silence, we give them the space to unfold new thoughts. And that what feels really inspiring. Because if you're able to be empathetic and warmhearted and give somebody what Carl Rogers,

who's a fantastic psychologist born at the beginning of the 20th century in the US, called an unconditional positive regard. And that means, I should say, for their personhood, not necessarily for their beliefs. We do not have to agree with them, but we can still respect their right to hold these ideas. Hmm. That, like, I actually kind of brought tears to my eyes. It feels very beautiful and respectful and kind to listen in a way that creates space for people. And I appreciate so much that you said that that doesn't necessarily mean that we need to agree with them.

But allowing somebody to exist, unfold, as you said, I mean, what an honor that is for them and for ourselves. Okay, so then that leads me to the how-to part of deep listening. I know you have an eight-step process and I think that would be hugely beneficial to me and I'm sure everybody listening in because it's not a skill we're taught.

Well, we're taught listening, but often badly, right? Like, as you mentioned earlier, we're initially taught by our parents who feel like the role is to advise, fix, solve, care for, and then we're taught it in, gosh, there are lots of bad ways it's being taught. How do we listen? You're quite right. In fact, if you think of a kid in the first year at school, their teacher says,

listen to me. And what she actually means is obey me. Put your pencils away, be quiet. And that's why so many of us fear listening, because we think we have to obey once we listen. But to go back to the eight steps, the first one is about creating space. So that means psychological safety. If somebody's not feeling safe, if you're an open plan office and you want one of your colleagues to explain why they're so late every day, open plan, not such a good idea.

Nature, far better, will go for a walk. But it's also thinking about the physical surroundings so that if somebody's a bit hard of hearing, a wood is much better, material surroundings, which is why a posh restaurant works better than a cheap, noisy cafe. So that some place that somebody is comfortable, both physically and emotionally, and maybe even cherished, which is why I spent time with Japanese tea ceremony practitioners.

So they would move as I'm holding this mug in front of me, they move the mug to the exact position. So the most beautiful picture is to point to you. Everything is done with intention for the speaker. The second step is listening to yourself first because if you're about to have a difficult conversation with somebody or talk to somebody who feels very differently, you first of all take the time out to say what's really going on here? What am I projecting? You know, which of the characters in my shadows, in my past am I projecting onto the person, getting in the way and what's my real agenda?

And wouldn't it be wonderful to actually think if perhaps the relationship is more important than proving that I'm right. Third step is about being present because so often we're distracted by our phone. We know how much money is being put into getting phones to distract us with notifications. And it's not just external distractions like phones

and noise, it's also what's going on in our own mind. So giving us a little time just for a few breaths before those important conversations to become present. And that's what helps, as you were saying earlier, that honor of being able to truly let somebody else's thoughts unfold. We need to be present so they can be present. So the fourth step is about the qualities. We talked about curiosity, not assuming we already understand them. Through that gateway of curiosity, we can lead to more empathy, more respect, and then being aware of our

judgments and letting them go. We need judgments. If we didn't have judgments, we couldn't tell friend from foe, but we need to be aware of our judgments so we can move beyond them. The fifth step is the gaze. So unless you're somebody from First Nation community trying to listen to an elder where it's not respectful to look, there's so much power in a gaze. And we're not talking like the French philosopher talked about the gaze in which prison officers would look at prisoners and be able to control them. We're talking about a warm, empathetic gaze. Often when I'm coaching people,

and I'm able to look them in the eye, they then go on a journey, a silent journey, they will often look up right as they think new thoughts, but knowing I'm staying with them, they'll go on a richer journey and then return to look at me and our gaze window will be reestablished. And that is very beautiful. And step six is silence. And people, there's like nine different types of silence. The poet Paul Goodman wrote an actually different illustration in my book about these nine different types. You know, there's the awkward silence, there's my book about these nine different types. There's the awkward silence,

there's the animal ferocity face silence. There's also a companionable silence. There's different types of silence and it's the same about the gaze. It's the more warm empathetic silence we want to try and embody. And in fact, recent research showed in a paper called Silence is Golden,

that even in negotiations, when both parties were using silence, they came up with many more creative win-win solutions rather than the zero sum. If I win, you lose. And the reason being, with silence, we can drop our blood pressure. Our heartbeat is able to drop. Our level of stress drops. So we're more in a state to be able to be listen and be open to somebody else. And then step seven is about reflecting back and I was talking earlier about the words, the emotion, what lies between. And step eight is about the deeper narrative, go deeper. What's really going

on for the other person? What are their needs that they're not even expressing or feeling they're allowed to feel? And what are their values? And if we can respect those things, they can come to a state of uncovering a different layer of their own story and perhaps feel brave enough to step inside a new story. I mean, that was a masterclass. And I feel like every one of the eight, I could recognize where I have opportunities to do and be better.

And, you know, I think we often learn best through experience and observation. So I'd love to maybe see if you could demonstrate this for us. But before we do that, I think the one thing that will be hard for people to hear is step five, the gaze. And I loved what you said about it being almost sending the message that I'm with you, I'm

staying with you. Because that is true, I just did it right now. We look around while we're talking, while we're thinking, while we're trying to form our thoughts or figure out how we want to express them. And there is something so meaningful and powerful that when you come back and you can tell that somebody's still there, they're still with you. What? Again, what a gift. And I just keep thinking how I know I can be doing these things better. So, Emily, will you help us? I don't know if you can demonstrate or give an example or a

story of where this eight steps of deep listening, how it would play out. Yeah, so let's have an example and I'll do my best, but maybe I won't do so well because I think deep listening is something you learn over a lifetime. And I certainly know it's not something I always practice. And I would say, by the way, if I asked you, would you like a cup of tea

and you practiced all those eight steps, I might just throw the tea back in your face or something. You know, it's not for every single conversation, it's for the conversations that really matter. And for those where we disagree. And also the way we listen to our children. And one thing I should quickly say about listening to kids is that so often, we don't want to stay with the difficult stuff. So when your kid comes home from school and they say, I've had a really bad day and my teacher was really picking on me. And I know I would have said in the past, oh, I'm sure it wasn't like that. I'm sure, you know, she was just treating you equally. I'm sure it wasn't so bad. And all of those things to cheer somebody up, because that's another thing we do when we listen. Whereas in fact, we just need to be able to stay with those difficult

feelings. Sounded like you had quite a tough time at school today, huh? And that's all we're not saying yes, your teacher picked on you. We're just acknowledging their feelings. And what I have certainly found with my kids is that after staying with the difficult feelings for a while and letting them explore them, they say, might say something like, yeah, it wasn't actually so bad because I had a great conversation or, you know, I had a great talk or I got a nice present from somebody or something else because they have been heard rather than say, yeah, when they haven't been heard.

So that's so powerful. But hey, let's do a bit of a demonstration, Nicole. So if I, and I should say virtually is harder because I wanna look you in the eye. So I'm trying to look at my camera at the top of my laptop screen, but in doing so I can't see your body language which I want to see even though actually

body language is not such a reliable indicator, but I want to in order to connect with you. So on the screen, what I try and do is move the image of the person, even shrink it so it's closer to the camera so I both can look at the camera and look at them more easily. So let me ask you uh Nicole what food reminds you of home? Uh Manicotti. So I'm hearing you say Manicotti with some enthusiasm. Yeah I actually had to think about it for a second because

it's you know when you say the word home, my brain went to home, like as in childhood, or home as in now. And I ended up with manicotti because that's what my mom would make for celebrations or big occasions or when we had lots of people over. And it's something I pretend to made for my now husband when we first started dating. And the reason I say pretend made is because I actually had my sister make it and claimed it as my own.

But we don't eat it a lot now, but it still feels like home to me. So I'm hearing you say in your childhood home when you're growing up whenever there was a big celebration or lots of people that sense of coming together associated with manicotti as a way of drawing people together and you on some level wanted to recreate it with your then boyfriend now husband and but you weren't able to but yet it was so important you got your sister to pretend to make it for you in order to be able to give that same nurturing to him. Is that right? Yeah, I think, you know, I never really thought about it that way, but I think it is something very early on.

He felt very safe and very comfortable for me and he shows his love through cooking and it was something I wanted to give back even though it's not something I'm great at. Cooking is not my skill set. It's sort of ironic because he's gluten intolerant. He can't eat it anymore. But yeah, yeah. It just, you know, it's one of the foods that feels like home. I can actually kind of smell it and taste it.

And I just, that's when I knew walking in the door that it was going to be a good family meal or a good experience or something good had happened. And so I'm hearing you say that when you, it's very visceral, it's very experiential, that you feel it with all the senses. Even now as you're talking about it, I'm sensing that you are there in your childhood home and it being a signal of something good happening

and your husband who conveys love through food, it's something even though you haven't, your skill set's not there, you still have the same intention to do that and to bring that signaling of good to your relationship and to him. Yeah, again, I'd never thought about it that way but I think that's what was unconsciously happening is it was a signal to him, but maybe even more so to myself that this was good and that it was different and safer than anything I'd experienced. Because it's funny when I describe my relationship with Jay, it does feel like coming home. So, yeah. That's so beautiful.

It's good and safer and coming home. What a beautiful way to describe your relationship. Thank you so much for sharing that, Nicole. We'll finish that little sort of exercise here, but I just wanna say, how many questions do you reckon that I asked you roughly there? Couple, two or three? Just one reckon that I asked you roughly there? Couple? Two or three? Just one. I only asked you what food. Because if I was asking you questions,

I would have asked, what is manakote? I was thinking this must be a kind of like panna cotta like a milky custard. I hadn't got a clue. But had I gone down that route, we would have talked recipes and you wouldn't have shared so much. And I feel so connected to you now. And I feel, and I know it's quite emotional with you talking about your husband and that sense of comfort and coming home. And I feel that this deep sense of connection to you and understanding you in the space of three minutes. Now I would say there's ethical things around this, because as you can

see, people end up sharing, perhaps more than they intended. And if you're in a professional context, you need to say, Whoa, wait a minute. I just want to stop there and check that you're happy and what you, you know, how you take that information. It is confidential. If it hasn't agreed to be shared. So in my book, I have a whole chapter on the ethical side of things, because that's super important. In my book, I've got a chapter on the ethical side of things, because that's super important. In my book, I've got a

chapter on the ethical guidelines around deep listening, because people can share more than they need to. And also, you need to know what you're comfortable bearing, because somebody might share more than you're willing to bear or that you can hold. So you need to think around the boundaries of that as well. But that aside, it was really beautiful. I don't know, how did you feel, Nicole? Yeah, I mean, I was surprised at how quickly it felt deep and personal. And we were talking about something that mattered.

You connected to something that probably felt obvious from the outside looking in, but I'd never made that connection before. And what was really interesting or what is really interesting, and by the way, I'm really glad you mentioned the ethical and confidentiality components of this. I do think that's incredibly important.

But I think we often think that the best way to listen is to ask questions. At least that's what I've been told a lot, practice curiosity. I think a lot of times we link that with asking a lot of questions and yet you only asked one. So can you dive a little bit deeper into why asking questions may not always be the best way

to make somebody feel truly heard or even giving advice, which I think is a lot of our natural response. Why do those two things not really help as much as we may think that they do? First of all, asking questions. As a journalist, I thought my questions were fantastic. I could get to the very core of an issue with my brilliant questions. But what we do when we ask questions, as in that example, had I asked about what was, wasn't panna cotta, I can't remember. Manicotti.

Yeah, that's okay. Manicotti. It's a pasta dish. It's a pasta dish. Okay. I didn't know that. But panna, manicotti. By asking questions, I take the steering wheel away from you.

I decide what avenues we're going to have a conversation around. Whereas when I give it to you and I authentically and open without trying to manipulate you, what I truly understand is what is going on for you. You decide where we go with the conversation, which is why it is so powerful, especially when people aren't often heard, which includes our kids. And particularly if you're a boss at work, the people in your team, it will be surprising for them that you allow them to talk about what really matters. And of course, it's so fantastic because then they surface concerns and ideas

which otherwise would remain hidden. With regarding our desire to solve and make things better, what we're doing is coming up with a solution that works for us. And it's not necessarily a solution which works for the other person. And not only that, even if it is a good solution, if you haven't come up with it yourself,

you're far less likely to implement it. But if I give you the space to join the dots yourself, you will have done the work and you'll be far more likely to embrace and put into effect whatever solution you come up with. It's yours. You've created it for you. I think you're dead on. When we ask questions, I should say and be responsible in my communication. When I ask questions, especially in my work, there is a leading component to it. I'm trying to get someone somewhere

or potentially even a manipulation component when I'm talking to somebody with opposing viewpoints, asking questions to try to get them to see the folly of their ways or whatever. And how powerful it is to just simply be curious and allow space for somebody to say and share. I couldn't agree more on my experience aligns with it. If it feels like our own idea,

we're so much more likely to do something with it. Okay, so my last question is around deep listening, specifically with people who have opposing viewpoints or who you want to punch in the face or who you can't possibly fathom ever agreeing with. How do we do this and how important is it that we do this? How we do it, first of all, it is hard. It is truly hard. It is the hardest, which is why I suggest we try, first of all, deep listening to people we agree with and people who we don't have these challenges with. But listening to people we disagree with isn't only people who think different politically.

They might be within our own family as well and people who we're closest to, often those are actually hardest to listen to. So how we do it is be aware that the other person has a reason for believing what they do. One good question to ask is what is it in your life experience which has led you to believe what you do. Because once somebody shares their life story, we relate to them more as a human being, less than an ideology. And therefore we find it easier to connect, even if we don't still agree.

I think letting go of the feeling that we both need to agree can be really powerful. We don't need to love each other. We want to try and understand them in an open way and listening to ourselves first and realizing what it is about the other person that triggers us so much. Often when I find if somebody really upsets me or triggers me, it's often not about them, it's often about me. And when I realize that I can let it go and be more open to understand them. And it feels really exciting. I should say, when you do that, first listening to somebody

who you think has a foreign ideas, and they are able to explain them to you, and you feel a connection, it feels powerful, it feels exciting. And is I believe truly important in the world because we know about the scourge of polarization even though when we carried out research for the book we found out, and this is across the USA with you govern more in common, that people wanted to listen to each other, people wanted to learn to listen to people who think differently. So there is a desire to understand people who are different, and the people who are in the media are often the extremes. And we tend to have a lot of misinformation about people who vote for the other side. There's a lot of research around that.

So we might be making generalisations. We put people in a box rather than to understand their full humanity. And when we open ourselves up, all sorts of things become possible. And we need to work together, I believe, in order to tackle some of the biggest challenges facing our society in our world. Yeah, I have a firm belief that there are more things that connect us and that we have in common than separates and divides us. Now, that doesn't sell media, right? So we do see that great polarization. But I loved what you said in that question

about what in your history or life experience has you believing this, I think, is what you said. Something around those lines. Because I often think if I grew up at that time in that environment, in that town, in that family, what would I believe? And we're so quick to want to believe that our perspective is right and best. And deep listening, I think, allows for that connection and that space to allow for other possibilities and different perspectives.

So I said my last question was going to be my last question, but it triggered another, which is in the eight steps of deep listening, the second one is listening to yourself first. If you know going into a deep listening opportunity that your intention is to prove or to convince or if you're just not entering that conversation with a lot of emotional maturity or curiosity or what have you, what would you recommend? To stop, to acknowledge, to clean yourself up until you can get to that place

before having the conversation? What do we do when we, if we're being honest with ourselves, know we're not really in the best place or position to practice deep listening? I think all of the above. I think it is about being authentic if we feel comfortable to say, hey, I really wanna listen to you.

I'm really curious to understand why you believe what you do. At the same time, I'm noticing a resistance to myself to listen. So can you just give me a moment to center myself so I can be truly open to understand? Yeah. I mean, how powerful that would be and what a level of trust I think it would build immediately and create that space for, you know, we're going to have transparent and open communication. And I just demonstrated that in some way. Emily, I often want to read my guests books, but this is one of the few times where I'm

not just going to read it myself. I'm going to give a copy to my husband and even see if my daughter will go through it and practice these eight steps together. I can see how transformational that will be in my relationships, in my own life, and frankly, for our communities and the world at large. So thank you for being here today. Thank you for writing this book and thank you for your incredible work.

Well, thank you so much for a really beautiful conversation and for your honesty and transparency too, Nicole. My absolute pleasure. Okay, friend, the book again is called Deep Listening. Go to bookshop.org or wherever it is that you buy books, go to your local bookstore, let's keep them in business. And Emily's website is emilycasrail.com. We'll put that link and all the other links in show notes

so you can find and follow her. And at the end of the day, I hope that you're walking away from this conversation, not with just ideas, but with a gut level knowing that listening, really listening, is one of the most radical, generous, and transformative things any one of us can do. Not to be liked, not to win an argument,

not even to be right, but to understand, to connect, to create space for others to exist, to be heard, and to feel seen. It's not easy. Not with our never-ending to-do list, jam-packed schedules and all the shoulds and the supposed tos. It's especially not easy when emotions run high,

opinions clash, and you're five seconds away from flipping a table. But it is necessary. We're craving it. And like most things that matter, the best way to receive it is to give it. And let me be real clear. Listening, deep, intentional, honest listening

isn't passive or weak. It's powerful. It requires great strength, maturity, and confidence. It's leadership, real leadership, not the ranting, preaching, telling kind we see paraded around for soundbites and clickbait. Deep listening, the kind that creates connection, builds trust, and allows for actual progress, is leadership, love, care, kindness, and connection at their highest forms. And yes, it is also woman's work.