About me

My main job is as a safety expert in an international group for digitalization, energy and medical technology. The work of a safety expert can be summarized in one term: “prevention”. This means ensuring that nothing happens afterwards. The aim is for all employees to go home in the evening at least as healthy as when they arrived in the morning.

A wide variety of “skills” are advantageous in achieving this goal as effectively as possible. For example: technical understanding, the ability to work in a structured manner, the ability to think outside the box, etc. And, of course, attentive “listening”. Why is this so important? For one thing, as a safety specialist, you must closely examine work activities in order to identify hazards and determine appropriate measures. To do this, you have to talk to employees, ask questions, and listen carefully to their answers. That’s the only way to get a clear picture of the work processes. The second reason, however, goes a bit deeper. After all, most accidents are caused by the “human factor”. Now, there are two factors that explain why people behave the way they do. On the one hand, this is because our brains are evolutionarily programmed to conserve energy. That’s why we always take the path of least resistance. The second factor is our individual values. We always make decisions based on our “high” values. And when taken together, these two factors usually do not result in behavior that is beneficial to workplace safety. Listening is therefore essential for putting yourself in the shoes of every type of person, so that you can recognize their true motivations and values. However, this is not achieved by “talking,” but exclusively by “listening”. Once you have finally recognized a person’s values and true motivations, you will also understand their behavior. And understanding that behavior, in turn, forms the basis for any further conversation in which the other person also feels “truly” understood. Because only when the other person truly feels understood can they then adopt different perspectives and behaviors regarding “workplace safety”.

An important milestone in my journey with “listening” was my training and years of work as part of a crisis intervention team. What do you learn there? To listen. For many, this is the hardest thing of all. Even the best of us repeatedly fell into the trap of “giving advice”, “interrupting,” and “projecting our own perspectives”. Genuine listening – that is, being able to look deep into another person’s soul for a long time – truly requires years of practice. And experience has shown that every client – truly every one – who felt genuinely understood through true listening also felt genuinely better afterward.

My insights from crisis intervention:

Every problem can be solved. First.
Every problem already contains its own solution. Second.
Third: everyone knows the solution themselves. But: most of the time, no one is aware of the solution.
And fourth: when another person truly listens to you, it becomes very easy to cut through the jumble of thoughts to your own solution and actually recognize it.

Furthermore, my 15 years of experience in customer service at a telecommunications provider laid the foundation for my understanding of what attentive listening can apparently achieve. During that time, I visited over 50,000 private households. Customers wanted to set up their TV, phone, and/or internet connections, and of course, we’d chat about personal matters along the way. And the common thread was that I constantly heard customers say: “So what I’ve just told you – I haven’t told my husband or wife that in over 30 years”. Apparently, people share more with a complete stranger than they have with their own partner over the course of their entire life together. All I did was simply listen and show genuine interest and understanding. And just like that, the clients began pouring out everything that was close to their hearts.

What else would I like to mention about myself? I can count on one hand the number of people with whom “I” felt that they were truly listening to me – for several minutes at a time. Attentively, empathetically, and without any prejudice. People who didn’t try to come up with solutions, offer advice, or interpret what I said from their own perspective. People like this are rare. They do exist, but they’re very, very rare.

So what prompted me to launch this website and offer “Listening”? Because I kept getting the same feedback over and over again from friends, colleagues, clients, acquaintances, and even strangers: “You’re really good at listening”, “You’re better than any psychologist”, “With you, I felt for the first time that I was truly understood”, “With you, I was finally able to get everything off my chest”, and so on.

Apparently, people are able to open up very easily and very quickly when I’m around. So why not offer this as a “professional” service right away? That’s how “Zuhören.jetzt” came to be.

However, I would also like to make it absolutely clear in this section that I draw a clear line between my work and that of life and social counselors, psychologists, psychotherapists, etc. Even though my experience has shown that genuine listening can often achieve more in a short time than the structured, “recognized” methods of regulated professions, please be aware that I offer only “listening” without any assurance or guarantee of any subjective results that might be expected.