The PERColator Podcast
The PERColator Podcast
Episode 44: The Virtues of Active Listening in Bargaining
The virtues of active listening have long been touted for its benefit in relationship building and understanding. But modern research has examined how active listening can lead to depolarization and stronger working environments, which we explore on this episode.
References:
- Listening to Understand: The Role of High-Quality Listening on Speakers’ Attitude Depolarization During Disagreements (various authors).
- Communicating for Workplace Connection: A Longitudinal Study of the Outcomes of Listening Training on Teachers’ Autonomy, Psychological Safety, and Relational Climate (various authors)
Our language is filled with numerous phrases and expressions imploring us to listen. Listen to your gut, listen to the voice inside your head, listen to your heart. But when we are placed in adversarial positions with others, or there is a conflict between two or more people or groups, listening is often the last thing many of us consider. Instead, we are often taught to speak out or take a position and advocate for our beliefs, which often involves a lot of talking and not a lot of listening. In 1951, one of the 20th century's most preeminent psychologists, Carl Rogers, coined the phrase"active listening" initially as a way to assist patients in a therapeutic setting, but later brought in to be seen as the cornerstone of good relationships, and human interaction. Even while the virtues of active listening are now widely promoted in modern culture, the value of active, also known as high-quality listening, is still not widely recognized in situations of conflict and disagreement. But an array of recent studies on active and high-quality listening have demonstrated its importance in reducing polarization between parties and conflict, moderating divergent positions and opinions, and creating stronger connections and relationships between parties. In the world of collective bargaining, this research is critical in thinking about ways to become a more effective negotiator and to try and strengthen collective bargaining relationships. Please join your co-hosts, Chris Casillas and Loyd Willaford, for this episode of the PERColator as we explore the meaning and importance of active listening at the bargaining table. Hello, and welcome to the PERColator Podcast. I'm one of your co-hosts, Chris Casillas. And I'm joined today by my colleague, Loyd. Loyd, how're you doing?
Loyd Willaford:I'm good. How about you, Chris?
Chris Casillas:I'm doing great. Glad to be back with you. You seem to be my partner in crime these days as we tick through a number of interesting topics, and I think we have another interesting subject on tap for our listeners here today. No pun intended there. That kind of cleverly came out, because we're going to be talking about listening for our listeners. So, now that I've got my dad joke on the record here, let me start, Loyd, with a little just kind of hypothetical situation. And because folks can't see us, this is a podcast of course, I'm going to measure your familiarity with what I'm saying by how much you chuckle as I talk about this in this little scenario. So okay, imagine for a moment we're in bargaining and you can be as an advocate or seeing this as a mediator. But, let's for a moment, kind of imagine ourselves as a negotiator, okay. We're in there, in this contract negotiation, we're sitting down with our labor partners on the other side, doesn't matter if we're on the union inside or employer side. And we start talking about the contract and the negotiator, lead negotiator, on the other side, starts explaining a particular proposal. And maybe this is a, you know, somewhat complex or controversial proposal. And as they're explaining this, they're kind of going through their list of reasons or explanation as to, you know, why they think this is a good proposal or what supports the proposal or, you know, mentioning various things. But tell me if this sounds familiar to you, Loyd, as you're thinking into my hypothetical scenario, and as the listener, as the person on the other side of the table at this moment. As you're listening to the other person talking, what's going on in your head is something like this: Oh, they got that fact wrong, oh, they are not thinking about this particular issue, oh, I can't wait until they take a breath because as soon as they do, I am going to come back with a strong counter argument about why they're wrong about all of this, and I just can't wait to get my voice in here and respond. And then the second they're done, you launch into your counter attack, so to speak, right? Like, no, you've got this wrong, you've got that wrong, you haven't thought about this issue, those kinds of things. Does that sound familiar, Loyd? Have you experienced that yourself or seen that from other people?
Loyd Willaford:I have, in fact, seen that. Fortunately, you know, not all the time, but enough of the time to certainly recognize that and this sort of difference between listening and waiting to talk.
Chris Casillas:Yes.
Loyd Willaford:Sometimes people call it.
Chris Casillas:Yes, that's a really good way to phrase it. And I think in bargaining, you know, we're kind of particularly primed for that. It's a high-stakes environment, there's a lot at issue. Each team's got, you know, multiple people kind of watching some of those performances, so there's a little bit of a performative aspect to it all. There's a lot of people trained in arguments that are at these tables, and they like to make those kinds of points. And you have kind of a clever way of phrasing it there that I really like. But I think I also talked about it in some of our trainings is kind of this like, debate mode, right? Like, you get into this just back and forth. Think of like a high school debate where you're trying to score points. Essentially, you want to kind of win the audience over with the merits of your logic and the strength of your facts and those kinds of things. And I think it's easy for us in negotiations to kind of lapse into that frame of mind, into that way of thinking. I'm also kind of remembering how Adam Grant, professor at UPenn, talks about this. He describes it as the prosecutor-preacher-politician mode. So you know, where you are trying to kind of just get people over to your side, win them to your side, bring them over. And when we're in that kind of mode of thinking, it's really hard, if not almost impossible, to hear what the other side has to say. Because your brain is just kind of spinning and turning and thinking about how you're going to respond to the particular position or arguments being made, rather than really trying to take in what the other person is saying or the other party. And Grant talks about kind of shifting to this scientist mode, this mode of being eager to learn and discover and look at the evidence and see what's actually happening before we reach any particular conclusions. So, let's talk a little bit more about that here today, and I want to kind of focus in on this subject or topic that is referred to often as this active listening or what we also refer to as high-quality listening. And there's been some really interesting research as of late, exploring this a little bit further and talking about this concept and the importance of engaging in what we refer to as high-quality listening and the value that that can have in situations where we're in opposition to one another or there's a tense disagreement. And I think some of the results of this research are a little bit counterintuitive at first, but if you start to kind of think about what some of this shows us, I think there could be a real value-add here for negotiators. So with that in mind, Loyd, when we talk about active listening, high-quality listening, where does this idea come from? What are we talking about here?
Loyd Willaford:So, the term was actually coined by Carl Rogers. Some of our listeners may know is a very famous psychologist, really active in what later became known as the (inaudible) Human Potential Movement. Wrote a very famous book, which I really enjoyed, called On Becoming a Person, and basically looking at sort of a holistic kind of, you know, not somebody coming to therapy to be fixed, but to having them kind of emerge as the person they are, and it was really influential in the therapeutic community. And, you know, this idea of that when somebody shows up, to really just be there with them and be engaged in what they are saying. And there's a whole set of behaviors, or I think of them as tools, things that you can do that will, if done correctly, you will be actually active listening and you will be perceived as being active listening. I think those two things can be two different things, and that's something to keep in mind. It's kind of like what we talked about in prior episodes around techniques of persuasion, or things like looking at cognitive biases and how do you apply these things? They're tools but they're not if you use them to manipulate, they are not going to work out too well. And some of the actual research and active listening will show that. So you want to be careful that, you know, it's a way of being that is meant to really connect you to the other person. And there's specific behaviors that we're talking about. The first, obviously, is paying attention. Like I am actually listening, I'm not waiting to talk, right? I'm hearing what people are saying. And, you know, how do you demonstrate that? Well, you maintain eye contact with people. You nod if you hear something that you recognize. It might signal that you agree, but I think sometimes the nodding is just I heard it, not that I am necessarily agreeing. The other person will see that as one of those two things. But just your physical stance, things like if you're sitting, do you have your arms crossed? Are you looking away? Things that would demonstrate that I'm not listening, kind of physical cues. And then sort of verbally like, if I'm not interrupting to make a point - so in other words, if somebody's talking, and you do have an interruption- the interruption is to ask a relevant question, like to get follow up. It's not to disagree. And then again, these sort of nonverbal things like eye contact, your physical posture, avoiding things like interruptions. Now, cell phones are a big thing. You know, somebody's staring at their phone the whole time you're talking is not demonstrating high-quality listening. I think everybody's been there, where somebody's texting. And I will say that some of these things in the virtual environment can be, because you don't have the environmental cues that you have when you are in a physical space, it's even more important to be demonstrating those. So, even something simple like having your camera on so that people can see you, that you're maintaining eye contact, that you're not being distracted. In fact, in a virtual environment, it's even more noticeable if somebody's staring at their phone the whole time, because that's all you see. You don't see the broader context. So, to just be careful about that. And then to sort of demonstrate those things by, you know, once the person is not accurately maybe paraphrasing, "Hey, this is what I heard you say." And you're accurately describing what they said. And if you miss something, to acknowledge that."Hey, I don't think I understand. Maybe I missed this point. Can you go over that again?" Or, "I'm not sure I understood. " Those kind of clarifying questions demonstrate that you're actually engaged with what they're saying, as opposed to, like we talked about the beginning, I'm just here because I'm going to end up disagreeing with you. And coming to this goes back to what I said earlier about these things being tools, not meant to manipulate. Like coming to the experience of listening with an open mind. I'm listening to hear what they're saying, sort of nonjudgmental, I don't have a preconceived notion. That's a hard thing to do and I think it's a hard thing to measure. I mean, some of these studies attempt to kind of measure that, but you know, there is a sort of subjectivity to a little bit of this. But if you're going to do this, to the best of your ability, show up to listen and be informed by somebody. Not necessarily showing up, I'm going to agree with what they say. But if there is a disagreement, I think about our prior episode about Kahneman's research about, you know, System One, System Two. When the System One goes off and says I disagree, take a pause. You know, allow a little space and say, "I may disagree, but I'm gonna keep listening". That's the System Two in the background that is going to allow you to hopefully hear the rest of what people are gonna say. So, I think that those kinds of tools of listening and to pay attention to that in, you know, whatever environment you've been listening, but I think particularly in the collective bargaining, people notice. I mean, the stuff they notice when people are listening and are appreciative of the follow up. And also you're going to get cues, right? If you're listening, you will hear. In mediation, this happens all the time. I listen to people talk and I hear something. One or two things, okay, that's probably the real issue. And if I wasn't listening, I would not hear that. And sometimes it's kind of subtle, and that's why it's important to stay engaged and hear. They're communicating something, but in between, particularly if they repeat things, people will let you know, sometimes directly but sometimes indirectly, if you're really paying attention to what's really going on. And that will maybe then clue you in, okay, if I'm a negotiator, hey, I heard this two or three times. When I go back, and I make my counter proposal, I may want to take that into account. So that's the kind of advantage of doing this. And also, as we're going to talk about here in a second, just doing that listening facilitates a relationship, a connection. Kind of back to where this all came from, Carl Rogers was talking about doing this to have a connection between a therapist and a patient or a client. He didn't really even like calling these people patients, because they are people. And I think that's the same thing. We're in a labor relationship, so we're trying to facilitate that relationship so we can, you know, do the job together that we're meant to do.
Chris Casillas:And before we jump into some of that research and dig in a little bit further, you know, a couple of things in terms of what you said there that I just want to emphasize, because I do think you're right. It's easy for that kind of quick, reactionary System One to kick in in these situations where you just want to jump at something and go right at it. And that really works against deploying these high-quality listening skills. And I always recommend for folks in these situations, there's training that you can do to improve in this area, and really work on these skills. There are things that you can learn and improve on, if you're committed to that. But also just in the moment, giving your brain a job to do to force it to kind of slow down and really focus on what's being said. And so that can be, you know, just focusing on taking notes of what the other person is saying, or thinking in your mind, okay, I want to capture, you know, the three key concepts that the other person is saying right now. Again, not that I agree with them, not that I'm endorsing what they're saying, but that I'm trying to capture it and paraphrase it or summarize it back so that one, I can show that I'm listening, and that they hear that as well. And two, also opening up a space to potentially clarify, come back on some things if there was some misunderstandings. And so I think, you know, giving your brain a job during those moments can be really helpful to encourage some of this high-quality listening. So if I heard you right, Loyd, I think, you know, when we talk about high-quality listening and deploying these skills, there's three things that are really important. Being attentive, and we talked about kind of what that looks like. Really showing that you're comprehending or understanding what the other person or party is saying. And finally, assuming some positive intent in what they're saying. Again, not that you need to agree with it, nobody's asking you to endorse somebody else's position, but that you are going in it with the perspective of I really want to understand what you have to say here. So I think when we talked about that, you mentioned some specific skills that you can deploy to show those three things. But those are really what we mean when we're talking about high-quality listening.
Loyd Willaford:On the topic of showing, one of the things you mentioned about like for example, taking notes or writing things down, I think that's great. I would add to that, if you're doing that, I would verbalize that. Say, "Hey, I'm writing this down, because it's important", so that you're demonstrating to the other side that you're doing that, because otherwise maybe you're writing something down, but they have no idea. They see you writing stuff down, that looks like you're being distracted. And, again, because we're doing more and more things virtually in a video environment, people will assume that you're distracted. So one of the things I do, for example in hearings where I have two screens and I'll be looking at exhibits, I tell people upfront,"Hey, you may see me move my head off to the side, periodically. Here's what I'm doing", so that they know that that's what I'm doing. I'm not you know, surfing the web or whatever in the middle of the hearing. I'm paying attention. Just to kind of give people some context. Maybe you wouldn't need to do that if you're in a live setting because everybody can see everything right? But just to be cognizant. Part of that high quality is being aware of your surroundings, and how those surroundings might affect how the other side is perceiving you as a listener, I think is important and just to pay attention to that. You know, articulate to the other side what you're doing. So just a quick follow up on that topic.
Chris Casillas:Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. Just being very intentional and clear about what's happening, particularly in the Zoom environment, where, as you've mentioned a couple times now that, you know, we just don't have the context that you do in a live setting, in-person setting. So I think that's really important. All right, well let's talk about a couple of these papers that we've, you know, pulled for this episode that kind of demonstrate some of these points and allow us to think about how listening can be a really valuable tool in the negotiation setting, perhaps more powerful than you might realize off the bat here. And one of those articles I want to start with is called Listening to Understand: The Role of High Quality Listening on Speakers' Attitude Depolarization During Disagreements. And what I really liked about this article, and there's a number of authors from folks all over the world who contributed to this article. The lead author is Guy Itzchakov from University of Haifa. But what I like about this article is the fact that it looks at high-quality listening, active listening, not just from the vantage point of understanding what it is or what it could do for the parties, but thinking about this more specific question about whether deploying that kind of skill set can actually bring parties a little bit closer together, who otherwise would be in a very serious disagreement, because they might be on kind of polar opposites of a pretty contentious issue, which is something we experience in collective bargaining all the time, right? I mean, you've got labor management and they often see themselves as being kind of polarized on various issues that come up in a collective bargaining agreement. And this study, and we'll post this in the show notes, because we're not going to get into all the details about how they measure and operationalize all these variables. But what I thought was interesting about it was looking at the effect that high-quality listening has on essentially bringing parties closer together and reducing some of that distance that's felt in otherwise high disagreement, conflict situations. So with that in mind, Loyd, what did they find?
Loyd Willaford:So, the authors had two things that they were measuring here. Positivity resonance, which they defined as the speaker's feeling more aligned, socially comfortable, and connected with the listener. And then nondefensive self-reflection, which they defined as thinking about their own attitudes. This is the speaker, their own attitudes openly and less defensively, and enabling to gain insights about their attitudes in themselves. So, and again, what they're looking at here is the effect on the speaker, when somebody is perceived to be actively listening to them. And what they found when they measured this and they had models of good listening and bad listening, and they had people basically observe them as if they were the speaker, is that when they were engaged in high-quality listening, their scores on the positivity resonance and nondefensive self-reflection, you know, went up, which I think is somewhat intuitive that because you know just from personal experience I think most people say if somebody's listening to me, that's a good feeling. I feel like yes, they appreciate me. They're not, you know, doing the things that are not high-quality listening like interrupting and making arguments to me in the middle of whatever I'm trying to convey to them. And so then I'm not defensive. To me, it would make sense that at least, you know, high-quality listening would not increase those. I think it's interesting that particularly with the self-reflection, that is not to me an intuitive thing. That just by somebody listening to me, I am automatically going to become sort of more open and think about my own attitudes? Maybe, depending on the topic, right? If I show up, and I already am convinced when I'm the speaker, I mean maybe that's a hard thing to measure. But the more aligned, socially comfortable, connected, they loved to be listened to. People, we're all self centered, we love to be listened to, so if we are listened to, we feel good about that. That doesn't surprise me, but the attitude that I might change, and that's the whole sort of depolarization idea that just by listening, people maybe start to think, oh. There was something interesting at the end of that article about, hey, we want to be careful about what we're listening to. You know, some of this stuff like this active listening, maybe if somebody goes on a racist rant, perhaps we don't have to engage in these active listening. And in fact, they say, hey, sometimes you can - I forget what they call them - socially awkward, or it's basically bad social things. If people are polite and they listen to that, that changes them, and we don't want that. So just a caveat. You know, just because if somebody is engaging in socially unacceptable behavior, you maybe don't have to do all this stuff.
Chris Casillas:Yeah, so that is an important caveat, for sure, but I wanted to emphasize one of the things you just said there in terms of how when, as a listener, you demonstrate that high-quality listening. They have research here that shows that it has an impact on the speaker in terms of kind of moderating some of their positions on things and causing some more self reflection. And I think that's a really fascinating result, because it does in many ways I think work against how a lot of us kind of think about these things. And what I mean by that is we often think about this as like to convince someone or to kind of move someone in our direction, we have to supply new arguments or new facts or new logical connections to persuade them that, you know, our position is better. So kind of the default assumption, I think, among many of us is that to move someone, you have to speak, right? And what this is saying is you can actually move people in your direction by doing the opposite of that, which is listening. But high-quality listening, it has to meet some of those thresholds we talked about earlier, but it can actually move people in your direction just by demonstrating those high-quality listening skills. Now, they were very clear, though, in saying that their results didn't support the outcome, that this would cause the speaker to essentially kind of flip their position. It didn't cause them to reflect so much that they suddenly saw the the wisdom of your position and switched sides, so to speak. But it did moderate their positions and kind of moved them closer, in essence, so that the chasm between the two positions and the disagreement wasn't as significant as it was before. And I think in collective bargaining, that's a particularly interesting and important finding, because a lot of times, it's not really necessary to essentially flip the other party to your position, right? We don't need to do that, in a lot of cases. What we want to do is kind of open up some space for dialogue and thinking about possible ways forward. And if, you know, somebody might be on a scale of like one to 10 and I'm at one and you're at 10, if we can get you off of 10 down to seven or eight, you know, that opens up a little bit of room to possibly think about some other ways forward. And that to me is a really significant finding.
Loyd Willaford:Yeah, and I 100 percent agree with that. What I was thinking about was when we were talking in earlier episodes about reciprocity and this idea of because you see somebody listening and being thoughtful, I think there is an effect on like, okay, I want to be socially part of this connection, too. And so I may, you know, be kind of inclined to sort of reciprocate that kind of behavior. I suspect that's kind of what's going on here. The authors didn't really say that directly, but when I was thinking about that, it sounds like this is kind of the dynamic that's going on. We want to fit in. So, you know, this person appears to be taking me thoughtfully and seriously. Perhaps I should take them thoughtfully and seriously.
Chris Casillas:Yeah, no, I think that mechanism is probably right on in terms of thinking about at least partly why the speaker starts to moderate a little bit. Because when they feel really heard, I think there's kind of a social sense that you need to do something in return to kind of meet that consideration, right? And I think that's how it manifests itself in kind of moderating your position a little bit. So that's, interesting. All right, with all that in mind, Loyd, let's bring up another one of the articles we took a look at for this episode that's called Communicating for Workplace Connection. And this was another interesting study, because what the authors did was to go into, I think it was an elementary school, and they worked with the teachers there at the school to train them on high-quality listening skills. And so there's some actual training that was provided to improve these skills, and then work with the teachers to deploy them in the workplace as they kind of interacted with one another. And then they measured the impacts on the relationships between the teachers over basically a year's period of time, so they could see how that changed in kind of a longitudinal way, as we say. And there was some really kind of interesting results here in terms of how, as the training progressed and as the teachers continued to work on these skills together and utilize them with one another, that impacted a lot of important feelings and relationships between the teachers in some significant ways. And so maybe elaborate a little bit on that, Loyd, and then we can talk about, as well, how that can impact the collective bargaining environment as well.
Loyd Willaford:Sure, so this study, like the other study, they're measuring some specific things, and they define those things. There were three variables that the study looked at. And as you mentioned, the basic overall finding was in all three of these, the levels sort of increased in a linear fashion and keep in mind, this is over the course of a year. There were 15 sessions that were two weeks apart, and they were two hours each of the sessions that were trainings, and then practical exercises which I think is important, because what it tells you is that this takes a little bit of work. Like, this wasn't just a one training and then everything changes. And I think that fact, that it was over a long period of time, that the same group of teachers and these trainings sort of build on themselves, I think, is part of what's going on here. But the three areas that they measured were autonomy. Was autonomy satisfied? They're measuring whether or not people feel like they can act volitionally and in self-congruent ways that reflect their values, interests and emotions. In other words, do they feel like they have a voice? Can they speak up? And related to that is being psychologically safe. Being comfortable, being open, asking for help, making a self disclosure about something that maybe you might want to keep to yourself. Are you voluntarily disclosing that? And then finally, the last kind of metric relation, relationally energetic is the term they use, and that's emotional energy that is generated or depleted by social interactions. So, I kind of think of that as how do you feel about this group of people that you're interacting? Are you excited to be there? Are you looking forward to this stuff? Or do you feel like you're just dreading this, I just got to show up for another one of these stupid trainings or whatever, or for work or whatever. So they measured all these things, again, over the course of the year. I think they had five or six check-ins. They did a pre-screen, and then five or six times over the course of the year, and then a post-screen and then again, like I said, I think it's important. This was, you know, pretty intensive training. It wasn't just kind of one off. And I think the other thing that was interesting to me is that it was training, like theoretically active listening, the things that we talked about. Like just nuts and bolts, how do you actively listen. And they did that one-on-one and in groups, and then they had people reflect on it. But then as the thing progressed, they took that to practical things on the ground in the school, like conflicts between teachers, or challenges with parents and students. Deployed it in the real-world setting, which I think probably has something to do with why they saw some of these things go up. I mean, it had some real kind of purchase, it sounds like. At least that's what I was reading between the lines. The fact that, you know, like I said, it's a pretty significant investment of time and energy.
Chris Casillas:Yeah, and I think back to your point you made a few minutes ago, when you step back from the research and the results, I think a number of these outcomes makes sense, in that, you know, for example, feeling more energetic and more connected as a result of going through this kind of intensive listening training. I mean, I think that makes sense to me. The authors refer to this as positivity resonance, but it's this idea that you feel more connected, you feel more positive, you feel more in sync with other people when they're really demonstrating that they're curious and listening to your concerns and your views. And it's creating those connections, so there's a positive feedback loop there that comes from that. And so I'm not really surprised, so to speak, to see some of these results and they're saying we feel more connected, we feel more energized to come to work and be among our coworkers. Because as we all know, schools can be really intense environments, right? There's a lot of pressure on school teachers to perform, there are standards that need to be adhered to, they're educating the youth and dealing with children. That can really kind of suck a lot out of you, energy-wise and emotionally. And so finding that kind of solace with your coworkers and really feeling heard can have a beneficial effect. I think in the collective bargaining space, in particular too, thinking about this, when he talked about that psychological safety piece, this is a sense where you feel like you can kind of share things and express yourself in ways that aren't going to come back to bite you. I think that's an issue that a lot of folks face in collective bargaining, right? You know, there's always that fear of if I reveal a little bit about my concern or what's really kind of motivating here, that's going to be taken advantage of. But the flip side of that is if we don't share that information, the other side is never going to discover that and we can't come up with more creative solutions moving forward. So, I kind of see the importance of that within the collective bargaining space and thinking about that particular topic, because as you can demonstrate these high-quality listening skills with people that you're working with, it does create that more safe environment to kind of share that information, to feel more comfortable, which can have some real value-add to the negotiation process, for sure.
Loyd Willaford:Yeah, I 100 percent agree with that. I think in particular, the fact this list is steady over time kind of reminds me of the long-term collective bargain relationship. This is not a one-time, quick fix, you come in, oh, I listen to you, and then I get this result. You've demonstrated over time and you're building. You know, like I said, when I read this, I thought, okay, what's going on? Is it really these special techniques and listening skills? Or is it the fact that they've had these people engaged in a project over a period of time where they're encouraged to, you know, listen to each other and their issues are brought forward and they can talk about them? I wasn't 100 percent convinced that this thing was all about the act of listening as opposed to the intentional building of a community, which maybe you have to have the listening to do that, and I think that's part of it. But just the regular interaction and the encouragement to just intentionally do the reflections and the exercises and all of that. One could argue, well, that's what you're doing when you're doing active listening, kind of intentional things. But that community building kind of reminded me of what a collective bargaining relationship looks like, that it is an ongoing thing. Like we're going to be doing this over a long period of time. It's not a one time thing.
Chris Casillas:Yeah, absolutely. Well, that sounds like a good place to finish off. Loyd, thanks for that conversation today. Glad we had a chance to talk a little bit about this research. Some of it, I think, supports some things that we already knew, but at least for me, opened up some new possibilities and understanding here that I didn't really recognize in terms of some of the potential benefits from engaging in this high-quality listening. So, I appreciate the time today, Loyd. I hope everybody at home can take a few things out of this, and we look forward to being with you next time.
Loyd Willaford:Thanks all.
