Eric Maddox: Listening with Purpose - Empathy Based Listening Program Overview

Hi, I'm Eric Maddox and I am very excited for the opportunity to train the FAs and BOAs of Edward Jones on my empathy based listening communication program, to help you build the highest level of trust with your clients, with your prospects and your team. In 2003, I was an interrogator on a Delta Force team in Iraq, and I tracked down Saddam Hussein and I created this empathy based listening communication process to do one of the most difficult jobs in the world. I had to build partnerships. I had to build the highest level of trust with the enemy on the battlefield. I know trust is nothing new for the success of your business. Trust is the foundation of your firm, but your industry has changed. And when we look at the change in your industry to goals-based advice, we know this is one of the greatest opportunities we may ever have to grow your business.

But let me ask you this, for you seasoned advisors, those are you with years of experience, are you finding it difficult, with your entire book of work to manage all of their financial goals? Are you out of time? And for you, newer advisors, are you realizing that to understand your clients, all their financial goals, all their life goals, you're coming into situations where maybe you just don't know all the solutions? And for all of you, are you seeing that when we look and say, "I need deeper discovery, I've got to have higher EQ, I've got to ask these great questions," you find yourself asking, "But how? How exactly do we do this?" This training is for you. What is empathy-based listening? How did I create this process? When I was that interrogator on that Delta Force team in 2003, my job was to help these Delta Force operators track down Saddam.

I had the responsibility of gaining cooperation from prisoners so they would give us useful actionable intelligence. I had been trained by the United States military on the best communication techniques known, to build trust, to connect. When I began these interrogations, I quickly realized these techniques weren't going to work. We had never fought a war like this before. The battlefield had changed. These weren't prisoners from the enemy military. There wasn't a chain of command of smoking gun with even a battlefield. And I knew why on earth would they trust us with their most precious asset, their intel. I didn't know what to do. And working with these prisoners, I thought, "We just got to keep them talking. I got to figure out who they are." And as I continued to talk to them, I knew I could help them. We would be willing to help them.

And as I kept giving these compelling arguments, I thought, "I'm just not good at convincing them that I have solutions for them." And I kept hearing this statement from the prisoners. They said, "Eric, you don't get me. You don't get me." And I'm talking to this one prisoner, and I knew we could help him. I knew his situation. I talked to so many prisoners, I knew how to help him. And he looks at me and he said, "Eric, you don't get me and you don't want to get me." And I thought, "He's right. What am I actually doing? What am I actually listening for?" Sure, I'm thinking of their situation, but in reality, I'm just trying to figure out how do I get them to confess? How do I get this actual intelligence? I'm listening to them with these goals and objectives, and I'm listening to them with a bias.

And I thought, "Is that possible to actually listen to somebody from their perspective?" And I continued these conversations. I simply told myself, "Do not solve. Do not try to give them solution. Simply figure out what it means to be them." As I continued work with these prisoners, I realized, "They're starting to open up. We are building this bond," but I had not actually done anything for them. And as these prisoners start to open up, we became very close. And I asked him, I said, "Why are you doing it?" And he said, "You get me." And I said, "What does that mean?" And they said, "Eric, if we're going to partner together, if we're going to be a team, my intel, that's my only thing of value. I'm giving you my resource, but the future moving forward, I have to rely on you. And if we're going to partner together, I need to know that this partnership is coming from my perspective," the prisoner's perspective.

And through that concept, over a five-month period on the battlefield, I conducted over 300 interrogations. The prisoners working with me started to unfold the insurgency in Iraq, and they took us to the top. We had a linked diagram of over 2000 names, but at the very top, we knew there was one man that was running the entire thing. He was the former inner circle bodyguard of Saddam Hussein. Every mission, every raid was to capture this bodyguard. And as my tour is running out, with less than 24 hours to go on my tour, we captured the bodyguard. The one man who knew the location of Saddam. The one man, Saddam, allowed to know his location. And I brought him in and I told myself, "You're not going to rush it. You're not going to solve for him. You're going to make sure he realizes, in this partnership, he's got to trust you." Trust you to do what? They're giving all their resources.

And when we're moving forward, they need to know that we listen to seek to understand that this partnership is going to be what I call on their stage, from their perspective. It took less than two hours and an hour and 45 minutes, this bodyguard looks at me and he said, "Eric, we got to go. We got to go right now." And that night he took the Delta Force team to the exact location of Saddam Hussein. Following the capture of Saddam, my life changed. I was taken immediately to Washington DC. I was taken to the Pentagon. I'd never been to the Pentagon before. And I go to the office, and they take me to then Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld. Donald Rumsfeld loved the way that we tracked down Saddam. He loved the way I did the interrogations, and they created a 30-person civilian interrogation team, first ever civilian interrogation team that would fall under the Defense Intelligence Agency.

And Donald Rumsfeld said, "Eric Maddox will be my first one." My next mission, my job, was to teach this process. And over the next 10 years, I ended up doing a total of eight deployments, 2,700 interrogations from prisoners from 25 different countries. But in teaching this process, I realized it starts with the foundation of trust, understanding what does it mean to be a partner? What does it mean to listen?

What I realized is that in general, we're all pretty bad listeners. And working with this 30-person civilian interrogation team, back on the battlefield, we had to study, why are we listening so bad? And I'll give you some easy statistics. On average, we only listen to approximately 25% of what we hear, but we identified all of our listening distractions techniques to remove those distractions. And then we realized what do we listen for? What are those keywords, those terms, those breadcrumbs that people most want us to hear? To do what? To let them know this partnership, we don't know what the future looks like, but if we're going to put our resources together and move forward, I built a culture, a communication culture that says, "We're going to empower you. Together this team, were doing it for you from your perspective on your stage."

It's been almost 20 years since the capture of Saddam. People started asking me to tell my story. I love telling the story of Saddam. But then they wanted to know, "How do we do this? How do we do this empathy-based listening?" I created the exact process, step by step because it's difficult. We like to listen for our goals, our objectives, especially if we're problem solvers. You're a problem solver. But as problem solvers, how do we take our skill set, our expertise, and conduct the partnership on their stage? Over the last two and a half years, I've partnered with MFS and have presented this empathy-based listening to over 60 regions in Edward Jones. But working with MFS, we've created an entire training program just for you. The training program, it consists of three classes we want to take you start to finish to ensure that you're going to master this process to build trust.

In the first class, we're going to dive in to the three levels of trust. Remember I said this is to build the highest level. We got to know what the other two are. Then we're going to talk about those stages. How do we get off of our stage, not thinking about our goals and our agendas, our objectives, but to make it about them for the rest of your life? You'll see all conversations with people on their stage and what it takes to get to their stage. Then we're going to jump into those listening distractions. Think about when you're in a conversation. You ever notice sometimes you go two or three minutes and look up and realize, "I haven't heard a single word this person said." Those distractions, they fall into six categories. I'm going to teach you all six categories, and I'm going to teach you techniques to remove those listening distractions so that we can improve our listening.

On average, people only listen to approximately 25% of what they hear. This program's going to get you deep into the eighties and nineties. But remember, this is about building trust and what we have to do and what do we listen for? We're going to start listen for those breadcrumbs, those words, terms, phrases that your clients, your prospects, everybody in your world most wants you to hear, so that you know this is how I discover. When we pick up those breadcrumbs, what do we do with them? Then the next class, we're going to talk about techniques to respond to the breadcrumbs. How do we demonstrate? I am making this about you. We want to build a culture to empower our clients, our prospects, and in the third class, we're going to take everything we've learned and we're going to take it to a practical exercise. What it looks like for you as a BOA, as a FA in these conversations with your clients, so we know this is exactly how we're going to take this transformational journey forward in our communications.

Each class, it's just an hour, but afterwards we're going to give you 15, 20 micro videos, "Do you want to see? Wait, wait. You were talking about category distraction number four," just 90 second, two-minute videos that you can go back and review. We're also going to be providing you white papers. A lot of people like to read and keep sheets of memory on their desk, on their computer that you can reference. This course, it's a partnership. This communication process, it's a change that says the most influential that any of us can ever be is if we demonstrate a culture that we're seeking to empower everyone in our world. Your clients, they know no one can tell them what the future looks like. What they're seeking is someone that says, "I'm good at what I do. I'm going to do what I say you're going to do."

You've earned that level of trust, but we're going to take your skill set and show you how do we communicate to ensure your clients always know we're doing it from your perspective. It's about understanding and it's about seeking to understand them. I'm very excited about this course. I'm excited to work with you. Every single class, there's going to be opportunities to ask questions. Before we get started, I want you to ask yourself, are you a good listener? Are there times that you're better than others? And what would the impact be, if every time you communicated to somebody, they could look at you and go, "You're different. You get me?" I'm excited for this course. I'm excited to meet you all, and I will see you at the first class.

Neither MFS nor any of its subsidiaries is affiliated with Eric Maddox. The views expressed are those of the speaker and are subject to change at any time.

FOR EDWARD JONES PROFESSIONAL USE ONLY.  Should not be shown, quoted, or distributed to the public.

MFS Fund Distributors, Inc., Boston, MA

 

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