Practice Listening
Speaking to the Rhinebeck, NY Rotary Club on "Relearning Human: The Power of Empathic Listening in Your Personal and Professional Life." (May 5, 2025)
I began my career in public radio and spent years at NPR, where I learned that voice, trust, and judgment are not abstract ideals—they are what allow people to work together, tell the truth, and serve an audience. I also saw how easily those values can be undermined when ego replaces curiosity and when leaders fail to step in to create psychological safety. Even in the best newsrooms, the absence of empathic listening can fracture teams and flatten the very voices they are meant to elevate.
Later, as a senior executive at Amazon/Audible, I experienced another side of the same truth: the skills that sustain creative excellence—deep listening, emotional intelligence, the ability to ask the right questions and truly hear the answers—are often invisible inside fast-moving, high-performance organizations. That realization led me to study, practice, and teach what I now call Deep Listening and Proactive Questioning: the art of creating connection and clarity through genuine curiosity.
Speaking about empathic listening and how compassion can be contagious on “Listening with China Blue”.
Deep Listening
I have spent thirty-plus years acting as a “professional listener” and interlocutor as a producer of audio news, podcast and documentary content. One of the observations I have made is that people, whether speaking in professional or personal situations, have lost the art of asking questions and listening attentively and curiously to the answer. They have thus lost a valuable tool in forming a deep connection and understanding with others.
I’ve found in my research that practicing Deep Listening/Proactive Questioning can:
Reduce emotional conflict with your children and relatives
Build trust and understanding in your community
Boost your dating success
Make you a more popular and successful boss
If this sounds too good to be true, new scientific research shows that people who ask more questions—especially, meaningful, emotional, empathic questions—are better liked. Research also shows that people who ask pre-prepared, open-ended, and follow-up questions, are more apt to be persuasive, especially when they use humor. In an age when Artificial Intelligence is sweeping our work and personal lives, this session will unlock the power of “Relearning Human.” It is a practice, when done regularly, that will heighten professional effectiveness, deepen personal connection and even improve physical health.
Key Takeaways:
Attendees will learn the best emotional, verbal and physical listening techniques to enhance mutual likeability and understanding, and therefore success, in opening the way for traditionally unheard voices.
Attendees will learn the best approaches for managing individual and group discussions that will encourage greater diversity of and promote understanding, while also soothing human feelings of loneliness and fear.
Attendees will walk away with an “Empathic Listening Scorecard” of good practices to guide any two- or multi-person conversation and retain a list of open-ended questions and a bibliography for further reading.