How Listening Differently Became Her Superpower

Summary

Podcast Summary
Podcast: Living Your Legacy
Host: Rudy Mawer
Episode: How Listening Differently Became Her Superpower
Date: May 20, 2026
Guest: Christine Miles – CEO, Author, and Founder of equip

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Episode Overview

This episode features Christine Miles, a transformational leader and the founder of equip, whose mission is to revolutionize how individuals and organizations listen, understand, and connect through empathy-driven communication. The discussion explores why listening is a foundational—yet often untrained—superpower, how Christine developed her skills through personal adversity, practical strategies for cultivating deeper listening, and the impact of empathetic understanding on leadership, innovation, and personal relationships.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Christine’s Origin Story: Listening Amidst Adversity

• Early Lessons in Listening
  • Christine shares how her mother’s mental illness, rooted in early loss, taught her to perceive beyond the surface, noticing both spoken words and underlying emotions.
  • This personal experience shaped her lifelong mission: “Most people still focus more on talking and telling than they do on listening and understanding. I learned this very vital skill young and it's changed everything that I've been able to achieve and accomplish in my life.” (A, 00:00)
• Motivation to Teach Listening
  • She questions what would be possible if everyone learned to listen differently: “I thought, what if we all learned this? How much more successful people could be?” (A, 00:15)

Listening as a Learnable, Scalable Skill

• Lack of Listening Education
  • Christine points out the gap: “There's no listening education in schools across the world and it's the most fundamental skill that we're expected to do and not taught how to do. So my mission is to change that.” (A, 00:34; 17:52)
• Moving Beyond “Performance” Listening
  • She critiques traditional “active listening,” now reduced to mere behaviors like making eye contact instead of truly understanding: “Active listening has been reduced to how we perform at listening rather than actually do it.” (A, 04:20)
• The Listening Path Metaphor
  • Christine explains her breakthrough framework using the metaphor of hiking:
    • “You wouldn't go hiking in the woods...unprepared...We're in the conversational woods all the time unprepared...What’s the path to get to the understanding or the summit? You need those supplies. So metaphorically, we give the tools for your backpack so you can understand.” (A, 05:05)

The Core Components of Listening to Understand

• Story Structure: Facts and Feelings
  • “People drop us in the middle [of the story], not at the beginning, and we're confused right off the top.” (A, 05:51)
  • Both feelings and granular facts are necessary: “Some people tune more into facts...some into feelings...you need to learn how to get those facts too, because there's two parts of the narrative, facts and feelings.” (A, 07:20)
• Empathy and Emotional Intelligence
  • Christine emphasizes the intentionality of listening: “Emotional intelligence is putting those things into our conscious mind. Ironically, listening builds that muscle when you learn to do it.” (A, 03:49)
• Toolbox for Listening
  • She shares specific tools:
    • The Map: Helps listeners orient to the story’s overall structure.
    • The Compass: A set of six key, repeatable questions, such as: “Take me back to the beginning.”
    • Consistency: “The only way to get good at something is to do it the same way every time.” (A, 13:24)

Applications in Leadership, Parenting, and Business

• Hard Outcomes from a “Soft Skill”
  • Christine contends that listening impacts every area of life: “It's a soft skill that has hard outcomes. And it's not your fault that you're not listening. Well, the brain is the greatest enemy.” (A, 03:50)
• Empathy-Driven Leadership
  • “When you give the gift of understanding, you're connecting on a different level and you're seeing beyond what's on the surface. We're solving the wrong problems, we're fixing the wrong things. This is the core business that you're in is like helping people understand really what their power is in their work so they can communicate it.” (A, 09:22)

Navigating Vulnerability and Boundaries

• Using the Superpower of Listening Responsibly
  • Christine: “All skills can be used for good or for evil...When we help people be vulnerable and uncover more about themselves...then we can serve them better...help them understand who they are so they can drive those results for sure.” (A, 12:00–12:46)
• Holistic Understanding
  • Citing her father’s influence, Christine shares: “He wanted to serve them...So that it was an act of service which led to outcomes and results for both him and for his clients.” (A, 10:14)

The Future of Listening in the Age of AI and Tech

• Human Differentiation in a Technology-Driven World
  • “The 21st century skill is listening to understand. AI is taking over the non-human things and the differentiator is how we understand ourselves and others.” (A, 17:05)
• Critical Thinking and Questioning
  • “It’s all about the quality of the questions you ask. It’s the critical thinking...[AI will do] the formulas. It's how do we talk about it, explain it, how do we make those connections and tell and understand the story for others.” (A, 17:52)

Christine’s Mission and “Equipped”

• Curriculum and Impact
  • She’s developed programs adaptable from elementary classrooms to global corporations, using systematic approaches and metaphors that resonate regardless of age or industry.
    • “We teach elementary classrooms through a licensable program to business leaders...the tools are really very similar.” (A, 13:24)
• Vision for Change
  • “My mission is to change that. There's no listening education in schools across the world...Not only to do that, but to do it in a simple way that's scalable.” (A, 17:52)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Most people still focus more on talking and telling than they do on listening and understanding. I learned this very vital skill young...” (A, 00:00)
• “It's a soft skill that has hard outcomes. And it's not your fault...the brain is the greatest enemy.” (A, 03:50)
• “We're in the conversational woods all the time unprepared.” (A, 05:05)
• “People start in the middle. We miss the beginning of the movie. We have to go back. Most people want to go forward…most of the insights are in the beginning.” (A, 14:29)
• “The 21st century skill is listening to understand.” (A, 17:05)

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Key Timestamps

• 00:00 – Christine introduces the concept of listening as a superpower
• 02:09 – Christine shares her personal motivation and backstory
• 03:49 – The science and psychology behind why listening doesn’t come naturally
• 05:05 – The “Listening Path” and hiking metaphor explained
• 07:20 – Balancing facts and feelings in communication
• 09:22 – The impact of real listening on leadership and influence
• 10:14 – Lessons learned from her parents: service and holistic understanding
• 13:24 – Toolkits for systematic listening, applicable for kids and executives
• 14:29 – The importance of finding the story’s beginning
• 17:05 – “Equipped” and the future of human skills in an AI-driven world
• 18:30 – Where to find Christine and resources for learning more

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Resources & Outreach

• Connect with Christine Miles:
  • Website: thelisteningpath.com
  • Social: @ChristineMilesListens

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This episode is a deep dive into the art and science of listening—not just as a tool for success, but as a transformative approach to leadership, education, and living a richer, more connected life. Christine’s insights, personal stories, and actionable frameworks make this conversation essential listening for anyone seeking to build a lasting legacy through understanding and empathy.

Transcript

[A]

Most people still focus more on talking and telling than they do on listening and understanding. So I learned this very vital skill young and it's changed everything that I've been able to achieve and accomplish in my life. And I thought, what if we all learned this? How much more successful people could be.

[B]

Christine Miles is an insightful, transformational and people centered CEO, author and the founder of equip. Through her work, she helps leaders and organizations strengthen communication, deepen understanding and build more meaningful human connections, creating lasting impact through empathy driven leadership and growth.

[A]

There's no listening education in schools across the world and it's the most fundamental skill that we're expected to do and not taught how to do. So my mission is to change that. Not only to do that, but to do it in a simple way that's scalable.

[B]

It spans the globe like a super

[A]

high is called Internet.

[B]

Elvis Presley.

[A]

Today Apple is going to reinvent the phone. It's not over until I win the

[B]

living your legacy podcast. For those who live to leave a legacy that's extraordinary. The impossible has happened. Oh, that is sensational.

[A]

Jordan Open Chicago with the lead Usain Paul is the fastest man on the planet. You can live your life.

[B]

Welcome back to another powerful episode of the Women in Power podcast. For Inside Success, I'm Ray Gutierrez. Something that all podcast listeners should be very good at is listening. And Christine Miles is quite the person we should be listening to. Christine, how do you feel?

[A]

I feel great. I appreciate you shining a light on this very important problem and solution.

[B]

Right on. We literally just finished filming your episode for Women in Power. How does it feel?

[A]

It feels, you know, it feels great. And I had a magnificent producer who knew how to ask the right questions and help get the right insights. So it's right on par. I loved it.

[B]

General Lauren. I love it. What are we going to learn about you in your episode? Give us a quick preview.

[A]

Well, I have quite a backstory. I think most people do. I mean, this comes from a very honest place. I learned to listen differently when I was very little. My mother suffered from mental illness stemming from an early childhood loss. She lost her mother from childbirth. And I learned to listen differently as a kid and really shine a light on what most people didn't see, what was below the surface. Just like my mother's pain was below the surface. Warm, exuberant, loving on the surface, but underneath she had this pain and sadness. So I learned this very vital skill young and it's changed everything that I've been able to achieve and accomplish in my Life. And I thought, what if we all learned this? How much more successful people could be? So this is a cause and a business for me.

[B]

A cause and a business. So no pun intended. But what are we listening for? Is it just beyond what we can hear auditorily, are we looking and feeling frequencies Speak more into it?

[A]

Yeah. So I think we're very much skimming the surface. In general, it's really nobody's fault because we're told to listen and not taught how.

[B]

Sure.

[A]

I think some of us listen at a different frequency. I think that's an empathy thing. And I think some of us are more wired for empathy and we're more wired to tune in in a different frequency. But empathy builds when you learn how to listen. So I think we can all get to a different level when we do this.

[B]

Well, yeah, that's something I admit that I struggle with. I don't listen, I don't even think before I speak. I just speak. And I've learned now as of in my 40s, that it requires a little bit of emotional intelligence and a little bit of assertiveness over your how you react to something. Because I'm not quite listening. What are some key steps for folks that are just on this path and they're like, wait a minute, what makes me, I feel like if I am a better listener, I'm going to be a better person, a better leader.

[A]

Yeah, better leader, better person, better partner, better parent. So it's a soft skill that has hard outcomes. And it's not your fault that you're not listening. Well, the brain is the greatest enemy. So think about what's firing and wiring in your brain. You're thinking of your own story, your own impulses, your own thoughts, your own feelings. It's all in our subconscious brain. What you just described, emotional intelligence is putting those things kind of into our conscious mind. So ironically, listening builds that muscle when you learn to do it. But we're white knuckling it because we're just relying on good intentions instead of or the idea of behaviors. Let me look at you. To listen. This is what active listening has been reduced to, which is really just how we perform at listening rather than actually do it. So what I intend to do is revolutionize how we listen to understand by not focusing on behaviors but tools.

[B]

I love it. I love how you nailed it. The performance of the act. It's something we are all guilty of and I try not to be, but we're doom scrolling. We're paying attention to a television set and our phones and Our iPads. Someone's yelling at us, someone's asking something of us. We're feeling something. And that was just 30 seconds ago. How do you combat with the everyday, with the noise pollution?

[A]

Well, there is a lot of that. And I worry a lot, not only about adults, but young people, because they're starting early and then they're used to the scroll and the passive and the quick fix and the dopamine from all that. So what's the antidote to that? Is to give them the tools. So here's the metaphor of the listening path, which is the new and breakthrough way of listening to understand. You wouldn't go hiking in the woods. Maybe you wouldn't anyway. I don't know. Some of us wouldn't. But if I said, I'm gonna drop you in the middle of the forest, you wouldn't go in unprepared for sure. We're in the conversational woods all the time unprepared. There's all kinds of side trails, there's all kinds of trouble. So what's the path to get to the understanding or the summit? Well, you need those supplies. So metaphorically, we give the tools for your backpack so that you can understand.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

You wouldn't go in the woods without a map. Right. So here's probably the biggest takeaway I can give for your listeners today, is that when you're listening, you're always listening to a story. But people drop us in the middle, not at the beginning, and we're confused right off the top.

[B]

Episode 4

[A]

so We Live in a world of misunderstanding.

[B]

Sure, yeah.

[A]

Every day your kid says, how was. You say to your kid, how was school? They drop you in the middle of it. You don't know it. Your spouse has a problem coming home from work. You're dealing with a project at work, whatever it is, we're in a sea of misunderstandings. It's the job of the listener to sort that out, to guide the speaker to tell their story in a way that makes sense to us. If you don't have a map, you don't know where you're going, you're going to be lost all the time.

[B]

What do you say to folks, to me that aren't really listening to the data that you're saying, but I'm really listening to the harmony and the music of your timbre. I respond more sonically to you, as opposed to the data you're feeding me, is two plus two equals. Sorry, that wasn't. That was not. That was bad math on purpose.

[A]

Two plus two okay. I'm not good at math either. So you're. You're listening for more the emotions, more of the feelings. You're feeling your way through the conversation. Well, if you were watching a movie and you only listened to the feelings, would that be enough to get the story?

[B]

No.

[A]

Right.

[B]

I'm a. But I'm a filmmaker as well. I'm looking at the framing of the shot, what's communicating to me visually, how the actors in frame emoting and how the lighting. But that's beyond auditory. That's visual now.

[A]

Right, but you know what you're looking for.

[B]

Exactly.

[A]

Okay. So that's why we need tools. If you know what you're looking for, it's easy to find it. It's like the highlights. If you know the key at the bottom, you know which animals to look for, you see them in the forest. The same is true in the conversation. We may. Some. Some people tune more into facts. That's more typical than what you're describing, than tuning into the feelings. Because we're socialized to not tune into feelings so much. So you have the opposite problem, which is a great problem to have. Awesome. But you need to learn how to get those facts too, because there's two parts of the narrative, facts and feelings. And that's one of the tools that's on again, if you know what you're looking for, you know how to find it.

[B]

But it's frustrating for me because you're absolutely right. I'm more about the feeling and the. And the reactive because I'm an artist. And when it starts getting into the. In the granular data, I'll have a mini panic attack and I'll get very aggressive and mad and I'll throw a five year old tantrum because I can't defend myself because the charisma no longer works. Like, I can do the charisma thing for a 20 minute podcast, but on that 22nd minute, boy, am I spent. Because I've been listening too much, I'm responding too much, and it's just like, how much can I keep up this energy? Which leads me to my next question. Like, how do you feel like entrepreneurs or thought leaders really communicate to each other? I'm not saying telepathically, but there is a smidge of telepathy in there.

[A]

Well, I think they share a passion. That is a rare thing that a lot of people are so tapped into, because when you're an entrepreneur, you better have purpose and passion in what you're doing or you're gonna give up. And I would say we're all in a tunnel and we're just chipping away to see where the light is. We don't know if we're a mile away or an inch away. So entrepreneurs share that. But my experience is that most people still focus more on talking and telling than they do on listening and understanding. And I think we miss a lot because we're not trained or taught or given the right tools to learn how to do that.

[B]

So what exactly are you learning? What's the end goal? So I'm listening better. How am I supposed to feel now? Am I supposed to be more successful? Or is money just going to magically spring out of my pocket? Because I paused before I had a thought. Like, what happens after someone, you know meets you and you kind of rewire them?

[A]

Well, the key is about how you make other people feel, not just how you feel. Because when you give the gift of understanding, you're connecting on a different level and you're seeing beyond what's on the surface. So we're solving the wrong problems, we're fixing the wrong things. This is the core business that you're in is like helping people understand really what their power is in their work so that they're understanding themselves so they can communicate it.

[B]

Correct.

[A]

That's, that's what listening does. It helps uncover the real problems, the real needs, the real pains, the real insight. So it's a joint venture of discovery rather than just the outcome of what we're getting. It's really, it's how we're getting there together.

[B]

So you spoke of the origin story of this superpower and you connected it with family. Can you talk a little bit of how you developed your superpower and you were essentially awoken early on in life?

[A]

Well, I saw how people didn't listen to my mother when she expressed her pain, so they would try to talk her out of her pain. Oh, things are great. You have a good life now. So I saw that and I saw well intended people who weren't able to understand what they couldn't see. The invisible. I also saw my father as an entrepreneur who said, you better understand your clients and listen to them deeply and understand all the things they're not telling you and uncover that so that you can serve. And he wanted to serve them. He was a financial planner. Great to understand them so that it was an act of service which led to outcomes and results for both him and for his clients.

[B]

In many ways, you kind of have to save your client from themselves because I've, I'VE come, especially now, the last couple of weeks of where I've been very exposed to the vulnerabilities of a lot of our clients and how far they will go to get something. I was just like, well, timeout. You don't need to go that far. You're actually revealing darker parts of your. Of your own self by just revealing this bit of information. I've already profiled you. Now I know how to speak to you, how to act to you, how much time I spend on you because I listened to specific key elements of your nature. And it's a fortunate, but also a very unfortunate superpower because you kind of start to really get a sense of what a human being, how far they'll go at no, at whatever cost. And it could also be a negative and could be a positive. How do you speak to people that once you reveal their true sense, and how do you pull them back from the negativity or push them towards the light? Because I guess what I'm trying to land on here is as I'm trying to listen to you, is exposing one's true self. Once you kind of unlocked it, how do you keep the guards rails up and keep that superpower ascending?

[A]

Yeah. For the other person, you mean?

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Yeah. So I think, look, all skills can be used for good or for evil. Right? But I think that when we. When we help people be vulnerable and uncover more about themselves and what they need or what they want or how to get there, then we can serve them better. So I think that when you understand and you get to these. The real issues, the real person, then that you help them, it's service to them. Right. And help them understand who they are so they can drive those results for sure. You know, my dad used to say, I can't just know about their financial needs. I have to understand what they want for their kids, kids, what they want for their uncle, their aunt, the whole family picture. So that I'm not just serving just one cause here, but their bigger picture needs for sure.

[B]

To me, I listen to the handshake when you meet, when you greet someone, or the eye contact, how long that contact gazes. There's a. There's a completely. My philosophy, my personal opinion is that there's a completely different sub layer to communicating between humans, animals that is happening subconsciously. That goes beyond just speaking.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And I discovered that those. Those portals in my adventures in California. I will say the force is very real. And I feel like as entrepreneurs and as thought leaders, our job is to educate and lead people into that right path. You mentioned tools. What tools do you. Should people use or are you using in your work?

[A]

Yeah. So we teach elementary classrooms through a licensable program to business leaders. So whether you're a large technology company or you're a fourth grader, the tools are really very similar. And so the only way to get good at something is to do it the same way every time. That's the, you know, any process is make it systematic. This is how I hope to scale and plan to scale this in an educational way. So those tools are all based on a hiking metaphor. Like I said, a map is one of those tools. We know that stories have. They follow a certain path. If we're always looking for a story, we know that's what we're looking for. Well, we better get the beginning, we better get the struggle, we better get the different parts. So that's another tool. And then one of the most powerful is what we call the compass, which is what are the questions you ask to actually get the story and get to that hidden story beneath the surface to see what others can't. And there's on the compass, there's six powerful questions that our clients have said. Just those questions alone change the game on what they're able to discover in client meetings. Students in a lesson. So, like, one of those is take me back to the beginning.

[B]

Sure.

[A]

People start in the middle. We miss the beginning of the movie. We have to go back. Most people want to go forward. How did the movie end? Not where did it begin? And most of the insights are in the beginning.

[B]

It's funny you mentioned that, because when folks are sitting in my interview sessions or sitting in this chair, I visually just see, like, here's your middle. I want to know all this visual stuff from your beginning before. Before we. And then I go, so what happens the moment you leave that door?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And that's your forward. And I visually go, hey, hello. I see you. This is a visual indicator that you're on the path. And I just may be a weirdo with stripes on, but.

[A]

Well, you're a storyteller. You're in the movie business, so. But most people don't know that people aren't organized in telling their story.

[B]

They.

[A]

You come in every day and you organize how people tell their story from beginning to what we call the new beginning. It's just that in life, we don't think of it that way. We don't think of it that we're helping people tell their story. That's a total reframe of how we listen is that we're the guide. We're the director in the movie, the

[B]

composer, the Phantom of the Opera, as I like to call myself. Every time I do my housekeeping rules, I'm like, I am just an ominous voice in the background, guiding you through your timeline of success told by you.

[A]

Yeah. And that follows a very clear path, doesn't it? Yes. We know as storytellers that follows a path. Storytelling and listening, story gathering, as I call it, are the same skill inside out. When you're telling a story, you're trying to make a point. When you're gathering or listening to a story, you're looking for the insight or the same things just in two different realms.

[B]

Sometimes I'll even close my eyes to listen to the timbre of the voice and go, da ba, ba ba. And I'm like, oh, there's the ending. That sounds like an ending to me. So happens they were like. And this is what happened. But there. There's in the timber of their voice, I'm like, as an editor and a visual storyteller that kind of sees it through audio, I'm like, that's the ending. That's it. Let's move on. Yeah, you can't train that. That's not something you go to film school. Go, well, that's. That's the line. And you can clearly see in other studios, our hosts are. Are. Have different styles. One host will actually. No, do that again. Do that again. It's like three takes. I'm like, like, you ruined. You've ruined the magic. Now you had to capture. You got to keep the cameras rolling to just capture that one bit. Because we have a CEO that is feeding 30 people, and they're figuring out

[A]

how to do it right. So that's a lot of pressure.

[B]

And our job is to make sure they sit here and look and feel amazing so they can empower and feed 60 more, 90 more in 30 days.

[A]

That's right.

[B]

You know what I mean?

[A]

Yeah. You feel your way through things.

[B]

Yeah. Like just going through that math in my head. Felt right through it. And that's because of your guidance. Just because you're just sitting and I'm listening to your shirt, Literally listening to your church. Listening matters. Let's talk about your. Your collective. What you're working on. Equipped is a name I keep hearing.

[A]

Equipped. Yeah. So we're equipping children and adults with the very important human skills. The 21st century skill is listening to understand. Because we're living in a technology world, as you said. AI is taking over the non human things and the differentiator is how we understand ourselves and others. And listening is the factor that's the key. And how do we shine a light on all the things that other people can't see?

[B]

Yeah. Curriculum is going to take quite the change in the next decade. I mean, the books are going to be rewritten now that we've got AI. AI in play, technology in play, higher learning in play. There's many more billionaires per capita. Like there's, there's a vibrancy happening in the world.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And it's either the yin to the yang, but neither, neither can exist without the other.

[A]

Yeah. And how. It's what do we know about AI? It's all about the quality of the questions you ask. It's the critical thinking. I was doing a math podcast with a teacher who talked about, you know, the AI is going to do the formulas. It's how do we talk about it, it's explain it, how do we make those connections and tell and understand the story for others. So my mission is to change that. There's no listening education in schools across the world. And it's the most fundamental skill that we're expected to do and not taught how to do. So not only to do that, but to do it in a simple way that's scalable.

[B]

Absolutely. How can people find you before we wrap up, how can people find you and discover you?

[A]

They can find us at thelisteningpath.com, they can find me at ChristineMiles listens and, and yeah, reach out and let us know how we can help your organization or your school.

[B]

Christine, thank you so much for your time and energy. That was fabulous.

[A]

Thank you.

[B]

I hope you were all listening for another episode of the Women in Power podcast and Inside Success. I'm Ray Gutierrez.