How to Get Better at Listening, with Bill Mayo

Hey. It's Dave from Coaching for Leaders. Today, I'm bringing you a quick chat about how to get better at really listening. I sat down recently with one of our academy graduates, Bill Mayo, to talk about what he did to begin listening better. Here's our conversation. I'm talking today with Bill Mayo. Bill is is an alum of the Coaching for Leaders Academy and also a plant foreman in the natural gas business. And, Bill, I'm so glad to have you here. Thanks for taking the time for this chat. Dave, thanks for allowing me to come on here and visit with you. I'm so looking forward to this conversation and just exploring some of the things that you've done particularly around listening because you've made so many really cool shifts in the last year on how you show up as a leader. Before we get into that, though, would you share with folks a bit of just who you are and a bit about your role in your organization? Sure. Sure, Dave. So like you said, I'm, Bill Mayo. I'm the plant foreman for a natural gas company here in the East Texas area. We trade natural gas and send it throughout the the homes here in in the East Eastern Part of The United States. Cool. You came across the podcast at some point in the not too distant past. How did you come across the podcast? Do you recall? I I do. So I had been through an interview process here at work. There was a potential promotion, and I I was not the successful candidate, but the vice president of our company was quick to to give me some great feedback, which was I was lacking in leadership skills and the fact that I just I just didn't have a whole lot. I'd had about five years in leadership, and this role required more than that. So he he offered to help me create a path to get my leadership skills up to where they need to be for future opportunities. And, that that led me to a few different training courses. Well, I really enjoyed the the leadership training, so I got on Spotify and decided to look for more. The very first one that popped up was coaching for leaders, and I began listening to a lot of the episodes that you had already recorded and and and posted on there. I listened to a good many of them, to be honest. But, repeatedly, I heard you talk about coaching for leaders alumni and this person and that person and and realized quickly that this would be very beneficial to me. And I think that's when I was able to reach out to you, and and we were able to get together. I remember you telling me shortly after we met that a chat I'd had with Brooks Bradford a while back had caught your attention, and you decided to, at some point, …