Hold a ten-minute practice conversation in which the other person does most of the talking.
Aisyah is training to be a financial adviser. She asked her colleague Ben to spend half an hour talking through a real problem while she listened. She recorded the conversation and measured how much of it she spoke.
Reading about listening and agreeing with it is easy. It is much harder to keep listening for ten minutes without trying to fix the other person's problem or telling a story of your own. This exercise tests how much of module 3 you can use under some pressure. You need a partner, a quiet place or a video call, and a phone that can record. Set aside about 30 minutes.
Find a friend or colleague who will give you half an hour. Ask them to bring a real problem from work or money. Invented problems run out of detail after about 2 minutes, and you need enough material for ten. Ordinary topics work well: whether to take a job offer, how to stop overspending on food delivery, a manager who keeps changing priorities, or whether to start investing or pay down a loan first. Tell your partner they do not need to share anything they are uncomfortable with.
During the 10-minute round you may use only four tools:
open questions, as covered in lesson 3.2 follow-up questions on what your partner has just said pauses, where you let the silence sit after your partner stops talking one summary at the end, with a check, as covered in lesson 3.3
You may not give advice, tell stories about yourself, ask "have you tried" or suggest products. If you feel the urge to suggest something, write it down and keep it for after the exercise. The restriction shows you how much a person will say when you stop offering answers.
Ask your partner for permission to record. Explain that the recording is only for measuring talk time and that you will delete it afterwards if they prefer. Start recording, set a 10-minute timer and open with one open question, such as "Tell me about what's going on with this." Then follow the thread wherever it goes. At about 8 or 9 minutes, summarise what you heard in your partner's own words and ask what you missed.
Ben's problem was that he spent far more than he meant to on food delivery and could not work out where the money went. Aisyah opened with "Tell me about how food delivery fits into your week." Ben talked for nearly a minute (her figures, for this example). After that she mostly used short follow-ups: "What happens on the nights you order?" "What makes cooking hard on those nights?" "How do you feel when you check the monthly total?"
After the question about the monthly total there was a long pause. Ben then said he only orders late, after overtime, and that his manager had started scheduling meetings at 6.30pm. The problem shifted from spending to working hours. At minute four Aisyah caught herself starting to suggest a meal-prep app, and she stopped.
Play the recording back with a notepad. Pause every minute and note roughly how many seconds you spoke and how many your partner spoke, in two columns. Total both columns at the end. This does not need to be precise. If your phone's recording app produces a transcript, you can compare the length of your lines with your partner's instead. Your partner should do most of the talking.
Then mark the 2 questions after which your partner said the most, or said something new.
Aisyah spoke for about two and a half minutes of the ten. The two questions that opened Ben up were "What happens on the nights you order?" and the one about the monthly total. If your own share comes out high, the result is still useful, because it shows you exactly where to start next time.
Now swap. Your partner listens using the same four tools while you describe a real problem of your own for 10 minutes. You do not need to measure this round as carefully. Pay attention to how it feels to be listened to.
Many people are not used to being listened to properly. They say more than they planned to, and the closing summary makes them feel understood in a way advice rarely does. Buyers feel the same thing when you listen well to them, and once you have felt it yourself the habit is easier to keep.
When you finish you will have a recording, a rough talk-time split, two questions that worked, and the experience of both roles.
Message your partner now and book the half hour, then work through the activity below.
Run the role-play and record it. Then write down your talk-to-listen balance and two questions that got the other person talking more.
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