1126: How to Build Connection and Understanding through Excellent Listening with Katie O’Malley

How to Be Awesome at Your Job

How to be Awesome at Your Job

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4.5 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 5 February 2026

⏱️ 38 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Katie O’Malley reveals her three-step listening method that fosters greater trust, connection, and understanding.

— YOU’LL LEARN —

1) Why attention is so quick to drift—and three ways to pull it back

2) What most miss with active listening

3) Why shared experiences don’t build connection—and what does

Subscribe or visit AwesomeAtYourJob.com/ep1126 for clickable versions of the links below.

— ABOUT KATIE —

Katie O’Malley is an Executive Coach and Leadership Educator with twenty (20) years of professional experience serving the nonprofit, education, and corporate sectors. Across these workplaces, Katie noticed her strengths and values consistently steered her toward the support and development of others.

Since 2018, Katie has worked alongside hundreds of individual, team, and organizational clients as the Founder and Principal Coach of (en)Courage Coaching. Established with the noble mission of providing exceptional, financially accessible coaching services to Chicago area professionals, (en)Courage Coaching has grown to support individuals and businesses from around the world.

• TEDx Talk: Attention We Give: Lessons From Listening for a Living | Katie O'Malley | M.Ed., BCC | TEDxAndover

• Website: EncourageCoaching.org

• Instagram: encouragecoachchicago

— RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THE SHOW —

• Book: Timequake by Kurt Vonnegut

— THANK YOU SPONSORS! —

• Monarch.com. Get 50% off your first year on with the code AWESOME.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	The goal is to help the other person, meaning of what they're sharing, help them feel seen and heard, and that you're making the attempt to understand by offering recognition and by bearing witness to that moment of their life.
0:24.3	We're social creatures. That's all we want is to know that we exist and we matter in this realm that we're living in.
0:35.9	That's Katie O'Malley. Since 2018, she's worked with hundreds of individuals, teams, and organizations as the founder of Encourage Coaching.
0:43.7	Katie's best known for her AIR, A-I-R, listening method, which helps professionals create more trust, connection, and understanding in any conversation.
0:52.1	So you'll learn, one, why attention is so quick to drift, and three ways to pull it back. Two, what most miss with active listening. And three, why shared experiences don't build connection and what does. And if you want a quick summary write-up of the actionable takeaways that we shared today, I recommend you drop on by Awesome at Your Job.com and sign up for the free Gold Nugget email newsletter.
1:13.0	I'm Pete McItis.
1:13.9	This is How to Be Awesome at Your Job.
1:15.3	And now here's Katie.
1:21.3	Katie, welcome.
1:22.6	Thank you so much for having me on your podcast today.
1:26.1	Well, yes, I'm excited to be getting into it.
1:28.8	You call yourself a professional listener, which is a great role.
1:35.0	Can you tell us something surprising you've learned about listening over the course of your professional listening career?
1:40.3	Oh, my gosh.
1:40.9	I think one of the most helpful things that I learned is that our brains move
1:47.0	entirely too fast for the person who is speaking to keep our attention. And so we are already
1:53.5	at a deficit for being able to stay focused and attending to the person who is speaking because the rate at which we speak
2:04.5	versus the rate at which we process information is like a tricycle going up against an F1 race car.
2:11.3	And so even just knowing there is a misalignment in the pace of speech and the pace of processing of our brain
2:21.2	can be really helpful in just folks saying, yeah, I am going to not be able to necessarily
2:27.9	stay focused on what someone is saying unless that is my intention when I am starting out in the conversation.
2:35.4	So the tricycle versus the race car. So our brains are the race car because they can go way
	...

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