 So many of you here. Awesome. I'm so excited to be speaking at RubyConf. And it's so nice to meet people that I've met online and to meet lots of new people here as well. My name's Heidi Helphand. And I pretty much nerd out on listening. And I want to share some communication tools that I use every day in the wild at work, at home, and in other places as well. So we're going to start out with a little story. This is my son, Samuel. He's 12 years old. And this is his recent Halloween costume. So here we are at home. You can see maybe the PS4 in the background. It's not an uncommon occurrence that he's playing his games. Julia, his sister's next to me. She's playing the Sims 4. And I'm writing on my computer. You know, we're a modern family. And we love our devices. And just last week, in fact, Samuel said to me, hey, mom, he turned to me. I was on the couch next to him. And he said, hey, mom, let's have a conversation. And I looked at him like, OK, that'd be awesome. Let's have a conversation. I put my computer aside. He turned his chair kind of like you see in this photo. And I said, well, what would you like to talk about? And he said, I don't know. And I'm like, oh, OK. So I thought for a moment. And I thought, hmm, maybe I'll ask him a question. Kind of draw him out, see what's on his mind. And I decided to ask him a special kind of question that I've been trained in. It's like it's a coaching question. We call it a powerful question. We'll dig into those later in this. It's going to be an interactive workshop talk combo kind of situation. So I said, hey, Samuel, tell me about a peak moment in your life, a time that was really meaningful to you, an important time in your life. He thought for a minute, he might have even done this. And he said to me, hey, mom, the peak moment in my life was the day that the doctors told me that my cancer was stable. See, Sam's a cancer survivor. He's 12 years old. And he made it. And I don't know if you hear many stories about that, about childhood cancer, but to give hope to lots of people out there who may be dealing with this, my son's a survivor, and we're very proud of it. And so this might not have happened. So that moment was really, as you can imagine, if you're a parent or not a parent, that moment was very meaningful to me. And I'd been thinking about it ever since. And unless we stopped and connected to each other, we might not have shared that moment. Now I'm not saying no devices ever. I love my phone. He always says to me, why are you on your phone? It's not an all or nothing kind of thing. But we're all humans together, and we can pause and get better at communication. So it was convenient. It came up in a couple of the keynotes. Life is short. Slow down and connect. Connect with each other. And so I'll be sharing some practical tips and tools for doing that. And it's going to be interactive if you're willing to participate in that. So as the first part of this, I'd like you to take a moment and just write down a few notes or write it in your brain. What's a peak experience that you've experienced that you're willing to share one-on-one with someone else in here? We don't have to get up and share this. But if you could take a minute and think about your peak experience, I'll give you a little bit of time and we'll use that in a bit. So take a minute and think about that. Okay, did you write something? Think about something. Hold that thought. So today I'm going to teach you how to improve your listening and communication. Listening is an essential part of communication. I don't know if we think about it so much. I think it's important to try to listen louder. Communication is more than just speaking words. And I think it's something that we can do to strengthen our relationships around us in all parts of our lives. We focus on the whole person, focus on our whole life. And I think it's also if you focus on listening and drawing other people out, I think it's a way that we can really generate other leaders around us. You don't have to have a certain title or role to be a leader. You have to, you know, anybody can be a leader. And so this idea of interacting with other people to help them grow is part of this. And I think also if we focus on listening, we start with listening, we can help increase ownership with others around us. If somebody comes to you with a challenge, for example, and you listen, maybe sit back, engage with them to encourage ownership and their own solving of the problem, I think it could be pretty powerful. This is something that I like to think about. And this is something that I do at work day to day. You know, people might come up to my desk and I stop, I face them and I listen and I encourage other people to solve their own problems. Now there's a place for advice giving and I do give that upon request. It's not appropriate necessarily to always be coaching someone through asking powerful questions and whatnot. But it's something that I find when I engage with other people to generate ownership or promote ownership, it can be really powerful. At my company, it's one of our company values. I work at Procore Technologies. It's one of our company values is ownership. And so these practices really fall in line with that. It's ownership, optimism and openness. And I say those values because when I was working at this company as a consultant, the people used the values. They taught me what they were just while we were going around doing our work. So these are kind of almost like principles as well. And I use these communication tools we'll be going into with my kids. So here's Sam again on Halloween morning with his sister Julia. So yeah, a little bit about myself. So I've been in the software industry now almost 20 years. Before that, I was an English teacher. I taught English as a second language and I thought for many years, how do I, I was kind of putting my back on my past. And I kind of moved into technology and I think with this work, it kind of helps close a loop there about bringing my skills together. So I've been a part of three startups now, three successful startups for nearly 20 years. At the first one, I was the 15th employee. We invented GoToMeeting, GoToWebinar, GoToMyPC. We were required by Citrix. And then I left a little bit after, one of our co-founders of that startup went to create another startup called Appfolio. So I was the 10th employee there and I left when we were about 650. So two successful startups for 17 years. Then I gained some coaching skills. What I'll be sharing with you here is from a coaching philosophy known as Co-Active Coaching. I was trained at the Coaches Training Institute, very deep and intensive training. So Co-Active is being in action together and being. And I wrote a book, it's on Lean Pub called Dynamic Reteaming, which is about team change patterns basically challenging the notions that, challenging the notion that the best teams are the one that are stable and stay together the whole time. There's a lot of value in dynamic re-teaming, especially if your companies are growing really fast. So I work at Procore today, director of engineering excellence. And I do a lot of coaching and I really enjoy that company. We make software for the construction industry. So if you can imagine being on a job site and seeing the blueprint for the building on your phone or mobile device, or maybe you're in the office doing the construction project management or even in the field, this is the space that we're in. I'll have to say both Appfolio and Procore use Ruby. Appfolio, when I joined, it was like 2007. And so both of these companies, very successful companies with very successful Rails, Ruby on Rails apps. Co-Active Coaching, this is a book that you can, if you wanna read more about this philosophy that I'm about to teach you, you can check out this book. I'll show it again later. So coaching conversations. Let's dig into a basic structure. And again, you can use these tools for regular face-to-face communication as well. So the first, and this is a very simplified version of a coaching conversation. But the first set of tools deal with listening, asking questions, encouraging the other person to get into action or choosing a way that they wanna be going forward. It's not only about action, it's also choosing how you wanna show up or you wanna be in a situation. And then following up, okay? So it's a very kind of arc of coaching, very basic structure. So these are tools that you can, if you happen to be a manager or somebody who meets to encourage people regularly, you can use these tools in one-on-ones. However, everybody can use them. I use them with friends and family. So the first tool we're gonna dig into is called levels of listening against co-active coaching tool. So there are three levels of listening, okay? And these tools for listening are tools for helping you build self-awareness, okay? You can use them inside this room, outside this room as you go through the rest of this conference and out into the world out there. So it's tool for focused attention and self-awareness. So we wanna put our attention out on the other person. All right, so the first level. Level one is very inward focused listening, okay? It's almost like you're half-hearing someone. Raise your hand if you've been in a situation where somebody is talking to you and your mind drifts. Just goes somewhere else. Yeah, so that's almost all the hands up here practically, it's a very human thing. We're with people, our attention goes away. They're talking about the feature that we're building and suddenly you're thinking about, oh, I wonder if I'm gonna have pizza for lunch or if I'm gonna have, it's kind of Mexican food for lunch. Your mind is drifting. The key is becoming aware of when that happens to you so you can refocus and put your attention out, okay? So it's that kind of thing. So I would request that you try to start to notice that as you're communicating with other people. So level two is attention out. So you're fully focused on the other person, okay? Your attention is fully out. You're hearing them, you're listening to what they're saying. Lots could be going on around you but you're really zoned in. Like you're in a crowded restaurant and you're at the table with somebody else. Lots of stuff is going on around you but you're only really focused on the other person, okay? Attention out, level two. So level three is just like level two so your attention is out but then you're starting to notice things around you. Maybe body language, like the thing that people say, you're talking to somebody and then they're going like this, okay? This is information for you to take in about how they might be feeling, right? Or somebody is like super excited right and they're moving around. So that's also information, kind of level three information. Or do you ever have the situation where you're talking with someone and you can just, you know, maybe their face is going a little bit red? You touched on a topic that has some kind of resonance for them and you can kind of see it. These are clues to guide your listening and attention, okay? And it's also just kind of the general environment or like the feel. Raise your hand if you've been in a situation where you like you walk into that meeting and you can kind of feel it's really heavy, you know, like the tone is really heavy, you know? And then, you know, if you're at a surprise party and you know, you jump up and surprise that person it feels totally different. So it's about that, you know, I'm using the word vibe, right? California word, but it's, you know, it's kind of like that feeling, that feel, that level three. So just to recap, you could also think a bit like a flashlight, level one is very inward focused, maybe a little bit distracted listening, level two, your attention is out, like really focused on the other person. Level three is kind of the body language or the general kind of feel or vibe in the environment. And so let's do a little practice about this. And so what I want you to do is everybody stand up and find a partner next to you and just stand up facing each other and then I'll give you further instruction, okay? We're gonna practice some of this listening, okay? Okay, can you hear my chime? All right, cool, cool. So I want you now to figure out who's gonna be person A and who's gonna be person B. So person A is the person whose birthday is closest to today, just the month and the day. Who has the closest birthday? You are person A. Cool, cool. So the key goal or takeaway why we're doing this is for the listener to be, to understand when you're in level one, when you're in that listening that's kind of distracting. So you're each gonna have a chance to do this. I will tell you when to switch. I will do this and I will probably say something. So the first part is only person A. So person A, as you might have guessed, I would like person A to share your peak experience that thing you thought about earlier. And person B, this is very important. Do not talk, okay? Person B, do not talk. Focus on your listening, put your attention out, okay? So you know, person A you're gonna have about a minute and a half to do this. I will tell you when to switch. Okay, you may start. Okay, switch. Person B, share your peak experience. Okay, come back together. Good, so what did you notice about your listening? I'd like to hear from three people. Difficult not to ask questions, okay? Okay, so that focus on just listening helped you kind of stay on track there and not worry about what you're gonna ask. One more? Oh, oh, interesting, okay. So you noticed when you got a little distracted when you were touching your face and stuff here. How many people felt a little bit distracted? It's normal. We're having kind of like an awareness of this so we might feel a little bit extra. Extra, so anyway, let's build on this, okay? So you can sit down. You can sit down now. We'll be standing up and sitting down. Right, cool. So the next thing I want you to do is just on your own, you know, write down a challenge that you're willing to share again with another person. Write down maybe a real challenge that you're facing, nothing too, too, you know, something that you're willing to share with someone else here. So take about a minute and write down a challenge. So let's take a look back at these coaching conversations. So to recap, we just focused a bit on listening. We talked about the three listening levels, right? So now we're gonna talk about questions and we're gonna talk about powerful questions and the powerful questions that we're gonna ask have the goal, we want them to have the goal to try to forward the action deep in the learning, okay? We wanna help this other person, right? Not by telling them what to do. Maybe helping them choose what they wanna do or how they wanna be, right? Maybe sometimes we wanna be stronger. Sometimes we wanna be a little more laid back and relaxed. We go in that meeting where we're triggered, we just wanna, we decide we're gonna go in there and just kinda chill out a bit. So that's valid. And then we follow up. So we listen, ask questions, try to forward the action, get them into a being, and then we follow up later. How'd that go? So we'll dig back into that in a moment. So second tool, powerful questions. So these are questions that are designed to help direct our curiosity. So when we're engaging with another person, and again, you can use this out, not in the context of a coaching conversation, in the context of a regular conversation, if you wanna try to draw out or continue a conversation, try to encourage the other person to elaborate on an idea. We wanna help and try to be curious for the benefit of the other person, right? And so we wanna help other people discover their own solutions. This has a parallel in education. We have problem-posing education. Our students in the classroom are not receptacles in which we deposit knowledge. We wanna engage students to think and to go forward. Same kind of thing is happening in education has been for a while. So we wanna help empower and get other people to solve their own problems. We wanna encourage and help other people have aha moments when you engage with someone and they're starting to think in a different way or a new way, some kind of aha moments. And when they say, when I'm coaching somebody else and they say to me, huh, I never really thought about that, then for me that's like pretty good question. Don't always get that, but kinda going for it, right? So we wanna get them into action or how they wanna be. So here's a few examples. So take a look at these questions and one thing you might notice is I have examples here that begin with the word what. When I was going through coach training, I don't know, four years ago, one of my coaching supervisors was like, the word what is your best friend when trying to draw out another person? So kinda put that in your back pocket. If you wanna, when you're having a conversation with someone you wanna ask, try to draw them out, use something that starts with what. So what do you want is a really powerful question you can ask. What's important about this is another one. If you really are trying to get them into action later, what's one step you can take? Through your listening and becoming aware of what's going on around you and with them, questions will come. So we select and choose or invent our questions based on the intuition of the situation. I use this all the time. I'm in meetings and I'm sitting back and I'm kinda okay seeing what's going on and then like a question will come and when I'll be coaching a team and maybe I'll throw something out there to encourage a different kind of thought, so. So these are opposite of closed questions. If I ask a question that ends in yes, that evokes a response that's yes or no. Did you like that movie? Yes. All right, well the conversation doesn't continue on. So these are really helpful, if you have kids, these are really helpful questions to ask. What was your day like? Instead of how was your day? Good mom, it was good. All right, well what was it like? So we wanna draw out the other person with these powerful questions. So okay, let's practice again. I would encourage you, find a new partner, someone you don't know, or you can use the same partner. So stand up, we're gonna practice again with listening and questions now. So find a new partner. Okay, so person A is gonna be the person that has more Ruby experience. So talk about that. So let's move on. So person A, you're gonna share your challenge. Person B, I'd like you to listen and ask them powerful questions. Okay, there's a cheat sheet here of a few you might ask. You can ask something else if you want, but just try this out. Again, this is a taste, okay? So I will tell you when to switch. So right now it's just person A sharing the challenge. Person B, listen using those levels. Remember attention out, pay attention to body language and try to throw in a question or two if you feel it's appropriate. Just try this out. All right, so I'm gonna give you a few minutes to do that. You may begin. Sorry to cut you off there, but we need to switch due to time. So switch, so now person B share your challenge. Person A, listen and try to ask a powerful question. You may begin. Okay, so you got a little taster there. I do these workshops sometimes for three and a half hours or an hour and a half. So this is like a super small taste. I hope you got value out of that practice at least to get exposure to these tools and trying to use them a bit. So what was that like? I'd like to hear from a few people. Wow, say more. Okay, I will mirror that. Woo, okay. Thank you. Yes. Okay, so he was saying, he was paying attention to his partner's body language to give him cues about when he might interject something. Ooh, using questions that started with what made me shut up and not give advice. Okay, yeah, so he was saying that asking questions with what made him think about asking questions that were a little deeper. So maybe you were a little bit in level one listening. I mean, this is an exercise, right? This is real life, but this is practice. So maybe it felt like I gotta ask a question about what am I gonna use? So what am I gonna say starting with what? So a little bit of level one listening there, but kind of file it away. It'll come back to you later maybe to use as you're out there today or from now on. So yeah, cool. Thank you for playing along and practicing there. I think it's good to try to use these tools. So you can sit down if you want. So a recap of these coaching conversations. So this is a basic arc. There's more to it than this, but listening in the levels, right? Asking questions to try to draw out the other person. If we are actually coaching, and when I do this with people, I usually ask permission. So let's say I'm at work and I'm with someone and we're going for a walk outside. And it's not a situation that was set up to be coaching, but I might get like a cue myself that, huh, might be helpful to ask them a few coaching conversations. I ask permission. Because sometimes it might be a little funky if you start asking powerful questions all the time, right? So you might wanna ask permission. You might feel intrusive. So you wanna ask permission. Hey, would you mind if I ask you a coaching question? You know, I have thoughts about this challenge you're facing, but you know, would you be cool if you wanna try this? So I do that a lot, I ask permission. And then following up. So we touched on that briefly, but it's the idea of, you know, maybe you're with a friend, they're going through a challenge. You ask permission, and maybe you ask them a coaching question. And you know, maybe later on you could say, hey, you know, let me know how that goes. I'd love to check in with you on that. You know, would you be willing to, you know, send me a Slack message or whatever in a week? Let me know how that goes. Or if you need any support. So some ideas there. Other tips. So these are some other random tips that I really wanna share. So also, you know, it's not just listening and asking questions, but it's also, you can paraphrase or say back what they said in another way. So getting better at conversation communication is also using different techniques to help people feel heard, right? So I've been paraphrasing a lot up here as I listen to what you say. I'm repeating back some questions. I'm mirroring using exact words, but I can also say things back using different words. This book Active Listening is, you know, lots of stuff about paraphrasings. This is an awesome book, Acknowledging Feelings. So maybe someone, you know, that story I told you in the beginning with my son he was like, yeah mom, like when they told me I was cancer free, you know, that was really a pivotal moment in my life, right? And you know, I might've said to him something like, gosh, it sounds like you're really relieved. So I didn't ask him a question, but I said something back as a way to try to, you know, take a guess and acknowledge how he was feeling. Or maybe you're with a friend and they're venting to you. They just had this like conversation that really irked them. You know, maybe you say something to them, like God, it sounds like you're really frustrated. And you may get it right and you may get it wrong. So we just kind of put it out there. So it helps other people feel heard. My awesome friend Paul Tevis, another coach. So he gave me this tip. So if you're ever in a meeting and you feel like some of us know it, maybe you'd kind of dominate the airspace. So use my friend Paul's tip, which is try wishes three before me. If you're in a meeting situation, share the floor with other people, you know, be inclusive. You feel like you're going to dominate that conversation. Just wait, let three people speak before you speak. If you want to try to self manage in that way, you know, it opens the floor to more people to communicate. My other friend LV Procore, he talks about boomerangs. So it's that situation, let's say you leave for the weekend, you go on vacation, maybe you went skiing for the weekend, you come back, you're telling your friend, oh, I went skiing for the weekend and it was just totally incredible. You know, we were going with powder, right? And then, you know, as your friend, if you say back to them, oh yeah, I went skiing last weekend too. And, you know, there wasn't any powder, but you kind of, you know, you kind of stole the focus, right? So when you ask somebody, keep the floor over there to them. Mind your boomerangs. Boomerangs are when you turn the conversation back on yourself, right? So keep your attention out. You know, maybe wait a little while, then tell them about your trip. You know, rubber ducking. We heard about this in some of the other talks. Vitor, a person that I work with at Procore, he put it out to all of us in R&D one day. You know, I'm always willing to be your rubber duck, right? Pragmatic programmer, rubber duck debugging. You know, you can always come to me, just simply being there for someone. Even if you don't say much, they can, you know, share what they want with you and you can be there and be present with them. The other thing is, if you have remote friends, put them on video. We can carry them around. Let's share our attention with our remote friends that we work with, right? Even if you do interactive activities, like for retrospectives, and I think just carry them around. Get somebody to be their, you know, the holder there. Yeah, somebody walks up to you and you're in an open area. If you're in an open area, you might be fair game for interruption. People might come up and talk to you. Kind of visually looks, they're having a conversation here. You can't really tell. Kind of visually looks like one person is not paying attention. But you know, it feels good, like especially if you're out there in the open, stop what you're doing, stand up, visually put your attention out. Makes a big difference, you know? So he might share, you know, he was in Tahoe over the weekend. You know, in Hoover here, you know, he might ask him a powerful question. What was that like? You know, so let's connect with each other. So I guess in closing, maybe you can write down, what is one thing that you might wanna do as a result of this session? Or it could be how do you wanna be? So think of one thing, who would like to share? Yes, okay, become a better listener. Okay, not asking so many closed questions. All right, cool. Thank you so much for your attention. Thanks for coming to my session. I'm Heidi Hellfand, I'd love to speak with you and have a great RubyConf.