The Chief Psychology Officer

Ep75 Selective Listening: How Our Biases Distract Us

• Dr Amanda Potter CPsychol • Season 4 • Episode 75

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Have you ever been accused of "selective hearing" or caught zoning out during an important conversation? You’re not alone. Our brains constantly filter information, deciding what deserves attention, often without us realizing it.

This episode unpacks selective listening; choosing what we focus on—versus selective hearing (unconscious filtering) and selective attention (our ability to stay focused despite distractions). These patterns shape workplace dynamics, often amplifying senior voices while drowning out fresh perspectives, and sometimes stifling innovation.

Neuroscience reveals our prefrontal cortex prioritizes conversations based on goals, while the default mode network pulls us into mental drifting. Gender and neurodiversity can influence how we process environmental stimulation, explaining why some struggle more with distractions.

With useful tips to help you master selective listening, this episode could help you gain awareness of the biases that are often barriers to truly inclusive communication. 

What valuable insights might you be missing? Tune into the people around you and improve your relationships at home and work.

Listen now to discover how becoming aware of your selective listening patterns could transform your communication effectiveness and help create environments where everyone feels heard. What conversations might you be missing that could change everything?

Episodes are available here https://www.thecpo.co.uk/

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For more information about the BeTalent suite of tools and platform please contact: TheCPO@zircon-mc.co.uk

Speaker 1:

Welcome to this episode of the Chief Psychology Officer podcast. I'm Caitlin and I'm here with Amanda Potter, ceo of Zircon. In today's episode, we're going to be talking all about selective listening, and so we'll be diving into what it is, why we do it and what can we do about it. So welcome, amanda. I hope you were listening I was was indeed. I had to put that in there, I'm sorry. So I'm curious about two things. Firstly, why the desire to talk about this topic today? But also, how are we defining selective listening Two questions in one, caitlin.

Speaker 2:

Okay so why did we choose it? We chose it because I think we're all prone to selective listening, and there are times that when we because I think we're all prone to selective listening, and there are times that when we truly listen and we're fully attentive and fully aware and open to ideas, and then there's other times we just don't give people our full attention and we get distracted or we might have made up our minds before we even start talking and listening. So I'd like to understand the difference between those two. In terms of the definition, selective listening it's a cognitive process where you intentionally focus on specific sounds or information whilst tuning out others. You're essentially choosing what to listen to based on your attention, your interests and your priorities.

Speaker 1:

One word that stuck out to me a minute ago. What you said was distractions, and I think in a world where we have so many distractions, I think that'll be an interesting one to dive into. But also selective listening as a topic I think will resonate with a lot of people listening right now, because I think it not only applies at work, which we'll be talking a lot about in this episode, but also at home and in all our relationships. So obviously, communication and listening is key. If we start off maybe by talking a bit more about the workplace and what that looks like. So in your opinion, why is it an important topic to be talking about when we're thinking about how we operate at work?

Speaker 2:

I think it's an important topic for everybody because I think it's the most frustrating thing to invest a lot in a conversation to prepare for a meeting and then feel like the people around the table aren't listening to you, that they're looking on their phones or they're distracted or they're half present and half not present. And I know, as a specific example, that when we deal with HR that they'll bring us in as the experts and they're very good at listening to us. They're very good at asking questions and listening to the response, but when they are consulting with their internal clients, they don't always feel listened to, whereas if we come in and talk to their internal clients, we get their internal clients full attention. So there's a difference in priorities that I used earlier and attention between that external consultant versus the internal consultant.

Speaker 2:

So what's a problem statement that we can think about to help, I guess, bring this a bit more to life all colleagues and family members and not make judgments about people and their ability to invest in a conversation, or dismiss people as irrelevant or submit to personal bias or have these pre determined views about certain people or groups so you mentioned a moment ago about how frustrating it can be to prepare a lot for a meeting, and then, obviously, you go into a meeting and then you feel like you're not being listened to.

Speaker 1:

So do you have a good example of where this has happened, maybe, where someone might be listening to one person but not another? I think that tends to happen quite a lot, or at least I've seen that. So I wanted to know what have you?

Speaker 2:

experienced. I think I'm in a very fortunate position and being a PhD and a CEO and having 30 plus years, because when I go into a meeting and having grey hair now no grey hair.

Speaker 2:

I can't see a grey hair and so when I get invited in, people usually invite me in because they want my views and they want my opinion and they're paying for it and they're prepared to listen to it. As a result, they tend to defer to me and listen to me. So I'm very lucky actually to be in that position. But I have noticed, if I take a quieter colleague with me who is a trainee but incredibly bright and incredibly capable, but quietly spoken and not as assertive as I am, I do find that clients are not always as able to retain their attention to that person. And now, not because they don't care or they're not interested, but it's partly about how they hold the attention and partly about the audience's views of the worthiness of what is actually going to be coming and how valid or helpful that information is going to be. So I think they have bias.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I think I've definitely seen that. I guess people automatically listen to the expert or the most senior in the room.

Speaker 2:

I think that's a good point. I'm sorry to jump in, caitlin, because deference to leadership is one of the aspects of psychological safety and we've seen it in clients where there are environments or climates where people are encouraged to defer to leadership. We have it actually in our own business. We have identified that as one of our risks. In our business.

Speaker 2:

The four directors and Antonia, the fifth director we are all quite strong in personality and we're all a little bit older than many of the other employees, so it's natural that people defer to us. But actually we're all a little bit older than many of the other employees, so it's natural that people defer to us. But actually we're trying to create a very inclusive culture, which is the other end of the psych safety scale, which is where everybody should have an opinion and everybody should contribute to the decision. And the risk is being quite a dominant person and having lots of opinions. That I do have and have lots of things to say very often is that I'm at risk of taking the limelight or taking too much of the time and therefore people being selective and they're listening for other people.

Speaker 1:

Well, I think you've said it yourself, though. It's about having that awareness that you know that is a risk and then being able to mitigate that through, as you say, bringing people into the conversation and understanding your audience as well. Who do you have in the meeting? You know what is the risk of there being a bit of deferral to leadership and so on. So, in terms of, maybe it's useful to go back to the definition, because when I was doing a bit of reading up around this topic, you often see the word selective, or you hear about selective listening, but also when I was doing some reading, the word was interchangeably used sometimes, or it was preferred to as selective hearing or selective attention. So I just wanted to dive into that a little bit. You know, are they all the same concepts or are they different?

Speaker 2:

I think that's a great, great point, because I also got very confused when I was doing research for this pod with you about what's the difference between selective listening, selective attention and selective hearing. I've added another one in there attention. So the research says that selective hearing is about the ability to focus on a specific sound in a noisy environment whilst ignoring other sounds. It's also known as the cocktail party effect, and it has another title, which is selective auditory attention. Now, it's getting confusing because they're using terms that are interchangeable, so why?

Speaker 1:

don't we? If we break it down a bit and we think, okay, we've got selective attention, what is the main thing that we need to know if we're talking about selective attention?

Speaker 2:

Okay. So I think selective attention is a good thing, whereas it does seem to me that selective hearing and selective listening isn't quite so much of a good thing. That's how I'm differentiating, but I may change my mind as we get further into the pod and we keep debating this. So, selective attention this is cognitive, and it's about focusing on specific information while filtering out distractions.

Speaker 1:

So what does that look like? What's an example of that?

Speaker 2:

It could be watching a presentation at a conference and ignoring a side conversation next to you.

Speaker 1:

Okay, the chattering in the background.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so that's attention. So that's a good thing. The next one is selective hearing. So selective hearing is when you and I, for example I'll go straight into the example in a 360 and I hear certain parts of the feedback you've given me and I didn't hear other parts of that feedback and that's more unconscious, so that unconscious filtering might be down to bias so in that feedback conversation I might have said a couple good things, positive bits of feedback.

Speaker 1:

There might have been some constructive criticism in there, but you're choosing, maybe, to not hear the things you don't want to hear, so you might have, you know, put your head in the sand around. The criticism is that. Is that what you're saying?

Speaker 2:

probably the good feedback. I probably would just focus on the criticism yeah.

Speaker 1:

So you've got negativity bias there, so okay.

Speaker 2:

So there's lots of confirmation bias, negativity bias indeed, both of those first two are quite unconscious. I would say that selective attention is a bit more conscious because you're actively trying to listen and pay attention. The hearing can be more unconscious, where we kind of zone into the things depending on biases. So now the last one listening. Selective listening. It's about focusing on specific parts of a conversation but ignoring others. So it's quite intentional, so it's more conscious. An example might be in a meeting, caitlin. So we're in a meeting and we're debating the pros and cons for a decision or an idea and I'm focusing on a specific solution. I will selectively, consciously, focus on the conversation that is aligned with what I would like versus something else. So it's much more purposeful that I might listen to certain parts of the conversation on the basis of my motivation.

Speaker 1:

So what we were saying earlier then, around being in a meeting and people maybe purposely only listening to the most senior person in the room, does that fit more into selective listening? I think it does. Selective listening, it sounds like selective listening, but is there a bias that comes into play in that one? Because obviously our bias is.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, defer to leadership, defer to leadership. We've gone back in the circle. Well, that makes sense, if anyone is still listening to this podcast and hasn't turned off yet. I give you full credit. That's amazing.

Speaker 1:

I feel like people will probably go through a very similar thought process. Um, I think, in summary, though, it's useful to know people are interested in this, that these terms are used, I think, interchangeably, so it's quite nice to be able to, I guess, differentiate them how you've done. So it is so obviously we've talked about it in the work context. Is it worth maybe giving some more examples to summarize it even further, from a more kind of personal you know what does it look like when we're out and about? I think it's helping us.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's certainly helping us in our definitions, isn't it? So let's go through them. So one selective attention. You're focusing on the conversation with the person sitting next to you, whilst tuning out the background noise of laughter coming from across the room because something they're talking about obviously something really funny, of course, but you're trying to desperately listen politely to the person that you're sitting next to, so your brain is actively filtering out the distractions so that you can pay attention that makes sense.

Speaker 2:

sense Okay. Selective hearing Okay. So you're still at that dinner and someone from across the room says your name while you're in a conversation and even though you weren't paying attention to their discussion, your name means that your brain has kind of changed what you're hearing because it's personally relevant to you, which is the cocktail party effect. So then you don't process the rest of what the person you're talking to is saying. You're now hearing the other conversation. Tuning in to the other conversation and so then, selective listening.

Speaker 1:

Are we still at the same dinner party?

Speaker 2:

so we're still at the dinner party, yes, and a guest is telling you a story about their recent holiday and you only pay part attention to the parts that you're actually interested in. So imagine it was a travel holiday and there was exotic food. You might really zone into the conversation about the food elements because you're passionate about cooking, but then completely tune out to the detail about the museums and historical sites that they visited because you're thinking yawn.

Speaker 1:

And it's so funny because I can relate to all three of those things. I feel like a lot of people are probably quite guilty of doing those, so I think the main takeaway for me then about them is how maybe selective listening is more intentional than the previous two. So selective hearing and selective attention.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I agree. I think it's definitely more conscious and we filter out what we do or do not want to pay attention to in a conversation and we selectively listen to the elements that we feel are relevant to us. So we're not actively listening to the wider discussion. We're too busy thinking about something that we need to do or implement after the meeting's concluded and trying to find evidence to support and affirm that approach. And I must say I definitely do that in large, large meetings. When I'm not hosting and I'm just part of a team, I find it really hard to listen to multiple strands of multiple people. I can end up finding I'm in my own head and I need to tell myself to listen.

Speaker 1:

I think that doesn't really surprise me as well, though, because I think our brains are doing so much without us even really thinking about it. The fact that even our brains right now are I'm moving my hand and my brain's trying to tell you know my hand to move. But then, on top of that, when you're're in a meeting, you are having to focus on looking at the person who's talking, are digesting what they're saying and then also thinking about what you might want to say as you say. This is you know your dog's barking in the background, so you know you really do need attention in these situations, and I guess that maybe comes back to active listening and the different levels of listening.

Speaker 1:

So in the podcast, then, obviously, I think we've kind of pinpointed down, okay, what is selective listening. I guess, based for that taking an educated guess here, is selective hearing and selective listening, the opposite then of active listening.

Speaker 2:

I think so, because selective attention is much more active listening, because we're ignoring the distractions, whereas selective listening and selective hearing both of them you're only getting part of the message, and the aim, of course, is for us all to be actively listening as much as possible in all the meetings and situations that we have at work.

Speaker 1:

So is there any interesting research or stats around selective hearing and listening?

Speaker 2:

Well, do you know what? There's not that much out there, even though we've made a right old meal of this. There aren't really many specific stats about how common we participate in selective hearing or listening, but we do know from the research that it develops very early in our childhood and I'm pretty sure it's prevalent in all of us. If you think about it from a neuroscience perspective, the reality is our auditory processing capabilities are quite limited and there are times when we have to employ a degree of selective hearing in order to cope with the massive amount of information that is coming in, both consciously and unconsciously. It's estimated we spend about 45% of our time listening, so it's no wonder that we're selective, because that's a huge amount of information that we have to take in every day.

Speaker 1:

I'm sure this differs from person to person because, you know, some people are much better than listening than others. So I wonder if there's anything to say about. You know how it's maybe different between age groups, genders, cultures, anything like that. I, you know how it's maybe different between age groups, genders, cultures, anything like that.

Speaker 2:

I've only got gender, and it suggests that females are less prone to selective hearing and listening than men. She's not going to be taken well? I don't think.

Speaker 1:

No, okay. So what about selective attention then? What does it say then around difference between genders?

Speaker 2:

Actually men are better at attention than women, so women are better at not being prone to selective hearing and listening because we're saying it's a bad thing. Actually, the good thing is attention and men are better at attention than women and there is some research by some authors that they found that when there's competing auditory stimuli that men are much better at being selective in their attention and zoning out, actively zoning out the noise, the distractions, than women are. Women are trying to kind of listen to everything.

Speaker 1:

I've got a really good example of this because my brother he lives in abroad, in Boston, but he's been back over the Christmas period and he was working and he can sit in the kitchen and completely zone out the fact that, you know, his wife and my mom are having a conversation. If that was me, there's no way I'd be able to do that, because I'd be trying to log in and listen and it's exactly that.

Speaker 1:

So what we're saying is let's say we're in a presentation, men are potentially more likely to be able to block out the chattering in the background and zone in on what, amanda, you're saying in your presentation, versus me, who might be getting quite distracted about you know, sharon and whoever talking next yes, exactly, and it might have even piqued your interest as well, of course yeah, that is interesting that there is that slight difference there between the genders. Are there any other individual differences that you've kind of heard or seen in the research?

Speaker 2:

Only research I've also seen is around neurodiversity, which of course is a really important and current topic. The research has suggested that neurodivergent people, particularly those who experience ADHD, they might be more likely to experience interference and distractions and they may find it less easy to filter out that background noise. So it's harder for them to actually actively listen and to remain attentive and focus and keep their concentration because they might, firstly, only hear certain words and certain aspects of the conversation and, secondly, they might only listen to certain components of the conversation, depending on their beliefs or what's important to them.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and actually now you've said it, that does ring true. I've definitely read that myself and from having you know really close people to me who do have ADHD, I think I can definitely see that. So, going back maybe to at the start, when we talked about selective listening and deferral to leadership, I'm curious to know why do we listen to some people and not to others? Is there anything else there that could be coming into?

Speaker 2:

play. Well, I think it's about what's actually happening for us. So it might be that, caitlin, you've got a lot on your mind. You might have some internal chatter, internal distractions. It could be we're having a conversation in an environment where there's a lot happening around us, so we've talked a lot about external distractions. So internal distractions and external distractions. It might be that we don't feel very well. It could be that you're being distracted by your physiology. Or it could be that you're in a new, unknown environment and you're trying to create a sense of safety and sense of comfort in that new environment. So you could be in a new client environment or a new external environment that you're not very sure about. So that's simply the way I would suggest those distractions come to the fore.

Speaker 1:

And you know what it's just made me think about we've talked about this on a previous podcast is around the default mode network and how that comes into play. Because surely, if you are selective listening maybe because you've become disinterested in the conversation might feel irrelevant and so you're tuning out but we're only listening to certain parts. You're tuning out the default mode network, so the part of the brain that's responsible for daydreaming and self-reflection comes in and takes over, so that leads to that mental drifting where your focus shifts away from the speaker to your own internal thoughts and that internal dialogue.

Speaker 2:

I can see why you're a psychologist. That's genius, caitlin. That's completely it, isn't it? Because actively listening is when we attend to file and store information, and that's much more about the executive control function, because we are, in the moment, present, aware, alert.

Speaker 1:

And I think, another thing that I was thinking about, because often we talk about the brain and different parts of the brain and how they come into play, and so the prefrontal cortex, or CEO of the brain, I think when we're selective, listening, our prefrontal cortex is almost evaluating which sounds or parts of the conversation are aligning with our emotions or our personal goals or interests, and that's the part of the brain that's deciding what to focus on in those scenarios.

Speaker 2:

So it wouldn't be emotions, would it? Because it's the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala would do emotions. But I do agree about the goals, the interests and the decisions.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, but would it be the rationalizing of those Rationalization?

Speaker 2:

Yes, so that, ceo of the brain, the prefrontal cortex will help us to make judgments exactly about which parts of the brain. The prefrontal cortex will help us to make judgments exactly about which parts of the conversation or which conversations that we should gravitate towards. And it might be again that deference to leadership bias because we might see someone as more competent or credible. We may have past experience of a person we may defer to them because of their seniority, or it might be an unconscious bias because of the way that person looks. They may look credible, they may show up looking fabulous and looking like they're a person of authority and so, therefore, we have some biases in there that are taking place. So, yeah, I do agree, actually, that selective listening and the prefrontal cortex.

Speaker 1:

There is a connection there yeah, I think one example you make me think of, about when people show up to a meeting, maybe, and they're deciding who to listen to and maybe they base it on, okay, what someone looks like. Obviously we talked a bit about the age, but I think how people dress as well and how that could influence selective listening. So has that been something that you've come across?

Speaker 2:

well, I haven't come across it in work, but I had an amazing conversation with my 19 year old recently. So he's got a tattoo on his ankle. I was very unhappy as a mum. He said to me over the Christmas break mum, would you hire someone with tattoos? And I said yes. He said if I'd asked you that five years ago, what would you have said? And I hesitated.

Speaker 2:

I realized that my view on tattoos has changed. I realized that because of my real desire to bring diversity into the organization that I realized that in the past I might have had a bias, not wanting to have certain tattoos visible on people to work in the organization, because in a consulting business we have to go into big corporations and I know those corporations in the past haven't been that open to tattoos. But now I think it's really important. He really smiled at me. He's then said mum, what about if I get another tattoo? I was like cheeky bugger and I was like well, no, I don't want you to have another tattoo. I was just saying that I'm really inclusive when other people have got them and I would be equally as open to listening to a person with tattoos or not. In fact, I'd be probably more inclined to understand the view of the person with tattoos because they're so different to me, because I don't have any.

Speaker 1:

It might mean that we come to a topic or a conversation with very different views. I think times have definitely definitely changed in terms of the whole tattoo the tattoo situation.

Speaker 2:

Strange conversation we're having, but um so is it a bias then I think it's a bias. I think I've, in the past, had a view which hasn't been helpful and has restricted my thinking, having not liked them in the past.

Speaker 1:

But now I'm very open, much more open than I've ever been so then I guess, if we go back to talk about selective listening, selective hearing you mentioned earlier about it maybe being a bit of a filter yeah, I think that's probably another key takeaway for me in remembering is that our brain's way of filtering out information to help us yes, that that's it, isn't it that all the time we are cognitive misers, we are trying to find the most efficient and effective way of getting through the tasks using the least amount of energy.

Speaker 2:

So, therefore, selective listening and selective hearing that filtering is about conserving energy. But we also know we're rubbish at multitasking. Humans are rubbish at multitasking. We can't do two things actively well at the same time. We switch from one thing to another very fast. So therefore, we have to actively decide what we're going to pay attention to, which is selective attention.

Speaker 1:

So then, what's the risk of that? I mentioned the ostrich effect earlier.

Speaker 2:

That definitely is one of the risks that we're more predisposed to pay attention to some information that wouldn't threaten our own views and ideas, because it goes back to cognitive dissonance, doesn't it as well? But we would actively dismiss things that we don't agree with and we might put our head in the sand.

Speaker 1:

Can it also?

Speaker 2:

be a good thing, though the truth is, what we're trying to encourage is for people to pay as much attention as possible to everybody. So the filtering is good from a neurological perspective and from an energy perspective, but actually in a business setting we want people to be as attentive and alert to everybody in the room as possible.

Speaker 1:

So what we're saying is there are definitely benefits and there are also risks when we're talking about selective listening.

Speaker 2:

We know selective attention is a good thing because it's all about paying attention to the conversation or the topic that we need to focus on, and that's an active or unconscious choice, but it's that filtering out, so that's a good thing. Selective listening and selective hearing is not so great. So we need to focus our attention on key areas, key conversations, so we're not become overwhelmed, but to make sure we're focusing on the right things that are going to broaden our thinking, challenge our ideas and not to confirm what we thought already.

Speaker 1:

So then, what can we do to remain attentive? So, in the moment, what are the things that people listening can go away and say right, okay, how do I become more attentive and less selective?

Speaker 2:

So I think it's about, with active listening terms, paying attention not only to the words but also the tone and the energy and the wider context and the emotional meaning behind the words. So the nonverbal cues tell us a lot about those, but it does require quite a lot of effort, and in the Michael Nichols book, the Lost Art of Listening, he talks extensively about this, about the need to improve our active listening of all of those elements.

Speaker 1:

And actually you've just made me think about some of the things that I guess maybe I've experienced in work, particularly being remote, is if you think about when you're on a meeting and trying to minimize distractions when you are engaging in a conversation. So you know, even just right now on this podcast, whilst we're recording it, we've shut down our emails so we don't get any emails coming in distracting us. I've put my teams on do not disturb so I don't have that pinging up. There's all these things that we do consciously to to make sure that we can be super engaged and not distracted. And I guess you know I found that going into meetings. I'll go for a walking meeting, sometimes purposely, because then I can really fully focus on if I'm in a one-to-one with someone. I can focus on them, what they're saying, and not having an email pop up which I might I won't read but it's.

Speaker 2:

That's that one bit of stimuli that I'm just like, oh, no, I 100% agree, and so the self-restraint piece is really important. I had an amazing one-to-one with Jess, one of our team, and she asked me for some feedback on some things, and I hadn't prepped for the call. So I'd seen it in my diary and I did, but I didn't know what it was about. I just saw it was about giving her some feedback and because I did it as a walking meeting, I think the quality of the messages I gave her was much better than if I'd been sitting at my desk, because I gave her my complete attention while I was walking. So that's really interesting.

Speaker 1:

I was really focusing on her so we are coming towards the end of the podcast, so I think it'd be good. I think we've done quite a lot of summarizing and, in terms of what it is, I wonder if there's any more around some of the things people can do, as I said, you know let's. We've just talked about maybe doing walking meetings, closing your emails if you're on meetings. Are there any other things that you think would be useful to share?

Speaker 2:

I think removing the distractions is a really important one, a really good one. We always do it when we're recording podcasts. We ask our guests to make sure that they're in a position that they can truly be attentive and present in those meetings. Breathing is another good one, because when you want to be mindful with your listening or you really want to be active, taking a few deep breaths can really help us to feel more present and being prepared to listen. There isn't that much research on mindful listening and how to stop mind wandering, but ultimately it's about providing the executive control function. I write notes. Now I've got this giant book of notes that I constantly take and I've filled so many books over so many years. The process of writing when someone is talking to me means that I retain my attention on that person, so that really helps me. It's less of an effort to listen if I do that.

Speaker 1:

I guess that obviously links directly to the active listening piece. I think that'd be one thing is taking away from this podcast. Is you want, really want, to be aiming towards that active listening? So I think that's a separate podcast in itself really, oh my gosh this was so hard, this podcast it's the hardest one, I think, we've recorded, just in terms of complexity, but isn't that?

Speaker 1:

funny because I think my preconceived idea before coming into this was oh, selective listening. I've used that term all the time. You know so many people use that term all the time. The same, when we talked about introversion, ext, extroversion, I think it's something that is more complex than maybe we think. So, yes, any more kind of passing thoughts from you, amanda?

Speaker 2:

I think my last thought is that, even though our brains help us to, both consciously and unconsciously, filter out information, we need to be more active and attentive and make decisions about when to pay attention and when to actively listen and when to hear the whole conversation rather than being a little bit lazy.

Speaker 1:

And actually, on that, I'd say well for myself, for you, amanda, and for our listeners, maybe take a moment to think about you know, where do you sit on this topic, you know, are you an active listener? How distracted do you get? What do you tune in and out of, and what can you be doing to improve your conversations, which is ultimately going to help you improve your relationships and your career? So, yeah, that's probably my final thoughts. So, thank you, amanda, I've enjoyed that one, and so, as always for our listeners, if you do enjoy listening to our podcasts and finding out some more things about psychology and business, then please do hit the follow button.

Speaker 2:

Thank, you, caitlin, thank you for hosting, thank you for trying to unpick this topic with me and thank you, emma highfield, for researching and to everyone listening. I hope you have a wonderful and successful day.

People on this episode

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Dr Amanda Potter

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Tim Hepworth

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Caitlin Cooper

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