Listen Like a Boss

New
·

3 Days

·

Cohort-based Course

The Elite Leader’s shortcut to connection, clarity, and control through speaking less, listening smarter

Companies I've written or coached for

Google
The Economist
Dell
American Express
BlackRock

Course overview

Listen Like a Boss: Deep Listening Frameworks to Build Trust and Influence


Are you ready to listen like a boss? Many believe we must talk our way to the top. I find listening beautifully helps us get there far more quickly. We understand and connect more, and we become more trusted and popular.


Active listening's a stand-out leadership skill. And yet few of us know how to listen in deep, transformative ways. When you lock in and listen, those you want to impress feel truly heard. Meetings halve in length. Problems become quickly resolved and decisions smoothly made.


The best part? You feel less drained and more informed. You learn what others really care about, and empower them 10X more.


Listen Like a Boss brings you my proven process, secrets, and habits I've built as a trusted executive communications coach with Google, the US Air Force, Dell, American Express, and many global finance houses and banks.

 

Since entering the coaching industry five years ago, I've coached over 1,000 leaders and 8,500+ sessions. By listening, probing, and giving space, I've helped leaders resolve stubborn mindsets and tackle tricky issues. Together, we've created tactics boosting their position and confidence, just from becoming clearer. I can teach you how. It starts with committing to becoming a better listener and listening how you've never listened before.


Here's what you can expect from our two, two-hour fast-paced workshops bringing discussion, reflection, tactics, and practice:


Class 1: Learn how most of us typically listen and discuss our blockers to listening better. (Hint. Blockers to listening well go deep. The biggest blockers I've heard? Loneliness, anxiety, and fears of unworthiness.) Discover a seven-step breakdown of my active listening process, and see me demonstrate it live time.


Class 2: Discover three quick and easy frameworks from master coaches helping you listen deeply, reveal blockers and hopes, and co-creating action steps. Learn my own frameworks for peeling back the onion using 1-3 word prompts. In an anchored, spacious conversation, "and?" or "because?" prompt and invite so much. Practice and unpack the learnings together.


Takeaways from this training have included:


-realizing that framing things in the front end helps us listen better and converse less. Simple prompts like: "Do you want me to listen to listen or to solve?" changes your game--and theirs

-interrupting in service of others to help us listen with more focus and less frustration when people ramble, bury their bottom line, or ignore the question

-seeing how much better we listen when reducing tech distractions, worrying thoughts, and anchoring

-sensing positive emotional shifts in ourselves and others from listening with intent, Like a Boss. Seeing the power and potency of this often underestimated and misunderstood craft


Join the next cohort. Bring your team. You'll change how you listen and gain ideas and tips to put into action with your very next team meeting, client pitch, and everyday conversations.


The Elite Leader’s Shortcut to Connection, Clarity, and Control through speaking less, listening smarter, and winning big.

01

Executives and new managers seeking to lead, not lecture, and to better know and understand their teams.

02

Chatty folks seeking frameworks to bottom line and listen better, if they want to stand out, feel confident, and rise.

03

Sellers, AEs, and sales teams needing to listen better, learn more, and speak 10% vs 90% of a client meeting.

What you’ll get out of this course

Active Listening strategies, tips, and secrets from a communications coach 1000+ global and Fortune 100 leaders adore and trust

  • Few of us trained to listen deeply nor thought we needed to. The world's changed. I built this workshop to share what helps me quickly reveal the fears, hopes, blockers, and brilliance in leaders I coach, so you too can pour in less, quit trying to fix, and win big

Awareness of how we typically listen and how that impacts our relationships, business, and growth

  • Discover listening psychology. Most of us listen with narcissism, selectivity, passiveness, domination, and direction. We listen to share what we know or "to fix."
  • Discuss our blockers, goals, where and why we zone out and all that we miss

Trust that silence is golden and profitable. Master the executive skill of knowing others have insights and answer(s) too

  • Truncate meetings through better listening and framing. Facilitate.
  • Be more curious. Notice patterns and shifts. Find comfort with pause and silence
  • Learn frameworks from coaching gurus, like Stephen Covey, whose simple question: "What's on your mind?" reveals surprising amounts

Brevity training. Learn paraphrasing, bottom lining, picking up and braiding in the speaker's language into powerful, open-ended questions

  • Build clarity through mirroring back and synthesizing the complex like a global reporter
  • See how weaponizing, judgmental, or directive questions shut down and reflective inquiry opens things up
  • Drive outcomes through questions vs quick answers

Seismic shifts in how you feel about yourself as a communicator, a problem solver, and a leader


  • Practice best practices. Get comfy with pausing, silence, curiosity, and noticing shifts, even asking after a sigh
  • Feel less drained from pouring in and more confident from learning more about your audience

A movement. Build your own EQ through Active Listening and your organization will follow

  • Discover a new personal brand as your listening improves
  • Become a life-long learner of an extraordinary craft which uplifts, empowers, and connects us

This course includes

2 interactive live sessions

Lifetime access to course materials

In-depth lessons

Direct access to instructor

Projects to apply learnings

Guided feedback & reflection

Private community of peers

Course certificate upon completion

Maven Satisfaction Guarantee

This course is backed by Maven’s guarantee. You can receive a full refund within 14 days after the course ends, provided you meet the completion criteria in our refund policy.

Course syllabus

Week 1

Mar 31—Apr 2

    Apr

    1

    LIVE EVENT: Class One. Listen Like a Boss

    Tue 4/14:00 PM—6:00 PM (UTC)

    Apr

    2

    LIVE EVENT: Class Two. Listen Like a Boss

    Wed 4/24:00 PM—6:00 PM (UTC)

What people are saying

        Debbi‘s a pro listener. She asks thought-provoking questions, gets everyone engaged, and shares valuable lessons from coaching top industry leaders. I know because she’s my coach, trainer, and now co-facilitator for my own Sales Rocket Fuel course here on Maven. Check out “Listen Like a Boss” to sharpen your listening and facilitating skills. 
Chris Bogdan

Chris Bogdan

CEO & Founder, Sales Rocket Fuel
         Coaching with Debbi has been a game changer in my communications. Great communication requires great listening. And Debbi is an exceptional, attentive listener. Our conversations bring meaningful breakthroughs, clarity to tough situations, confident decisions, and refined expressions. Take her workshop to listen with empathy and precision.
Fernanda Noronha

Fernanda Noronha

Director of Finance at Grainger

Leaders at the world's largest military and global corporations tell me their secrets, fears, and trust me as their communications coach.

D G McCullough

D G McCullough

Communications coach of 1k+ Fortune 500 leaders. Memoirist. Entrepreneur

Debbi Gardiner McCullough is a New Zealander who has reinvented herself three times across three continents and industries, most recently leaving academia after 19 years of service to train as an ICF-certified coach.


Over 3,000 MBA and journalism students have improved their communications from her mentoring and training. Her reporting and writing on social trends and struggles, women leadership, and sustainability has featured in the Economist, the Financial Times of London, Engineering News-Record, the Guardian, and NPR. She's interviewed Fortune 100 leaders, the Property Brothers, Hector Garcia, and the Dalai Lama. She also won a UN Foundation press fellowship for reporting on enterprising ways women save their money when banks won't permit them.


Debbi’s coaching has helped improve the confidence and careers of over 1,000 leaders (and aspiring leaders) at the world’s largest tech, manufacturing, and financial corporations. She hosts two podcasts, writes on Medium most weeks, and is publishing several memoirs.


Debbi has a Master’s degree in Journalism from the University of California at Berkeley, where she won the Bloomberg Prize for Excellence in Business Reporting two consecutive years. 


Connect with Debbi on LinkedIn.

A pattern of wavy dots

Join an upcoming cohort

Listen Like a Boss

Cohort 1

$500

Dates

Mar 31—Apr 3, 2025

Application Deadline

Mar 28, 2025

Listen Like a Boss Workshop Schedule

Two 2-hour workshops. 15 Minutes Prep.

  • Tuesdays

    11:00 a.m. to 1 p.m. CST

    With small prep work (15 minutes) and 2 hours live discussion, training, demonstration, and practice, you’ll have a handful of tips on how to Listen Like a Boss by lunchtime.

  • Wednesdays

    11:00 a.m. - 1:00 p.m. CST

    With small prep work (15 minutes) and 2 hours live discussion, training, demonstration, and practice, you’ll learn beautiful frameworks to Listen Like a Boss by lunch time CST.

Learning is better with cohorts

Learning is better with cohorts

Active hands-on learning

This course builds on live workshops and hands-on projects

Interactive and project-based

You’ll be interacting with other learners through breakout rooms and project teams

Learn with a cohort of peers

Join a community of like-minded people who want to learn and grow alongside you

Frequently Asked Questions

A pattern of wavy dots

Join an upcoming cohort

Listen Like a Boss

Cohort 1

$500

Dates

Mar 31—Apr 3, 2025

Application Deadline

Mar 28, 2025

$500

3 Days