Record Yourself: The Brutal Experiment That Revealed What Bad Listeners Actually Sound Like

A simple audio recording experiment in my institute exposed a shocking truth: my best counsellors were talking 75% of the time. Here is what happened next.

Most of us are convinced we are good listeners. We nod, we maintain eye contact, we wait for the other person to finish — or at least we think we do. Yet the single most confronting moment in the research I did for The Winning Edge, The Champion Mindset did not come from a book or a study abroad. It came from a small experiment inside my own educational institute, with two people I trusted completely.

What that experiment revealed about listening — or the lack of it — changed the way I train sales professionals, managers and counsellors across India. It might change the way you work too.

This is the story of Rashmi and Payal, two audio recordings, and a number so uncomfortable that neither of them could look away from it.

The Two Best Listeners I Knew — Or So I Thought

Rashmi and Payal were my two most senior and trusted counsellors at my educational institute. They had years of experience, genuine warmth, and a track record of helping students navigate difficult career and life decisions. If I had asked any colleague to name our best communicators, Rashmi and Payal would have come up immediately.

Both of them were convinced — as most skilled professionals are — that they were excellent listeners. They believed they gave students the space to speak, to share their worries, to arrive at their own clarity. And from the outside, it certainly looked that way.

I had no reason to doubt them. Until I introduced audio recording.

Why I Introduced Recording in the First Place

The idea was simple and, frankly, borrowed from sports coaching. Athletes review match footage. Surgeons review operative videos. Why should a counselling session be any different? With the full consent of students, we began recording sessions so that Rashmi and Payal could review their own conversations and keep getting better.

Neither of them expected what they were about to hear.

The Number That Changed Everything: 75%

When Rashmi and Payal sat down to listen to their own recordings, the shock was immediate and visceral. The counsellor — the professional who was supposed to be creating space for the student — was speaking 75% of the time. The student, who had come to the session specifically to share problems and find clarity, was speaking only 25% of the time.

Read that again. The person with the problem had only a quarter of the conversation to describe it, explore it, and own the solution. The expert spent three-quarters of the time filling the air.

"We consistently overestimate how much we listen and underestimate how much we talk. The only way to know the truth is to measure it."

— Avinash Chate, The Winning Edge, The Champion Mindset

This is not a character flaw unique to Rashmi or Payal. It is a universal human bias. Studies in organisational psychology consistently find that people rate their own listening skills far above average — a classic example of illusory superiority. We fill silences because silence feels like failure. We offer solutions before the problem is fully stated because we want to seem competent. We talk because talking feels like helping.

But in counselling — and in sales, and in leadership — talking is often the opposite of helping.

Active listening is a skill that must be practised deliberately — not just assumed.

What Rashmi and Payal Did Next — and Why It Matters for You

Here is the part of the story that I find most powerful. Rashmi and Payal did not get defensive. They did not dismiss the data. They did not say the recording was unfair or unrepresentative. They looked at the number, accepted it, and made a deliberate decision to reverse the ratio.

From that point forward, they committed to a new discipline:

• They would speak only 20 to 25% of the time in a counselling session.
• The student would speak 75 to 80% of the time.
• Questions would replace statements wherever possible.
• Silence would be treated as productive space, not a gap to fill.

The result? Their counselling effectiveness — measured by student satisfaction and the resolution of actual problems — doubled.

Not improved slightly. Doubled.

The CANI Principle: What Gets Measured Gets Improved

Tony Robbins coined the acronym CANI — Constant And Never-ending Improvement. The principle I draw from this in my workshops is that improvement is impossible without measurement. Rashmi and Payal were not bad at their jobs before the recording. They were simply working on guesswork rather than data. The moment they had a real number, they could act on it.

This is a lesson I bring into every corporate training programme I deliver across Pune, Mumbai and Maharashtra. In sales, in leadership, in customer service — what you cannot measure, you cannot improve. And what you are most confident about is often what you have measured least.

"Constant And Never-ending Improvement is not a slogan. It is a system. You need a feedback loop before you can have a growth loop."

— Avinash Chate, The Winning Edge, The Champion Mindset

Why Salespeople Are the Most Dangerous Talkers in the Room

If you are in sales in India in 2026, the temptation to over-talk is enormous. You have been trained on your product. You know the features, the benefits, the comparisons with competitors. You are enthusiastic. And enthusiasm, left unchecked, turns into a monologue.

The prospect sits across from you — or on a video call, or in a WhatsApp conversation — and they have a specific problem they need solved. But if you are speaking 75% of the time, you will never hear the real objection. You will never discover the underlying fear. You will pitch solutions to problems they do not actually have and miss the ones they do.

The Three Listening Failures I See Most in Sales Training

1. Reloading instead of listening. While the client is talking, the salesperson is mentally preparing the next point. They hear words but process none of them.
2. Premature solution delivery. The moment a need is half-stated, the salesperson jumps to the solution. The client feels unheard, even if the solution is technically correct.
3. Filling silence with features. When there is a pause, the reflex is to add another product specification. A trained listener instead waits — because the client is often still forming the thought that matters most.

Every one of these failures is invisible to the person committing it. That is why recording is so powerful. You cannot argue with a timestamp.

How to Run Your Own Rashmi and Payal Experiment

You do not need a counselling institute to replicate this experiment. Any professional who communicates with clients, customers, students or team members can do it. Here is a practical framework I share in my corporate training workshops:

Step 1 — Get Consent and Record

In India, it is both legally sound and professionally respectful to inform the other person that you would like to record a call or meeting for your own development. Most clients and colleagues agree readily. Use any smartphone or laptop recording app.

Step 2 — Measure the Talk Ratio

Listen back to a 30-minute recording. Use a simple timer or a notebook. Mark every period where you are speaking versus where they are speaking. Calculate your percentage. Be ruthless and precise.

Step 3 — Set a Target

For counsellors and coaches, the ideal ratio is 20:80 (you:them). For sales discovery calls, a 30:70 ratio is a strong benchmark. For leadership one-on-ones, aim for 40:60 at most. Write your current ratio and your target ratio side by side.

Step 4 — Review Weekly for Four Weeks

Record one session per week. Measure the ratio each time. You will find the number shifting — not because you are trying harder, but because awareness alone changes behaviour. This is the power of measurement.

In my workshops across India, I use this experiment as a live exercise — the results are always eye-opening.

The Deeper Lesson: Listening Is Not Passive, It Is Disciplined

One of the most persistent myths about listening is that it is a passive skill — something that happens automatically when you are not speaking. Rashmi and Payal's experiment dismantled that myth completely. Genuine listening requires active discipline: the discipline to hold your next thought, to resist the pull of your own expertise, to be curious about what the other person has not yet said.

In The Winning Edge, The Champion Mindset, I describe this as listening with the intent to understand, not with the intent to reply. When you listen to reply, you are managing a conversation. When you listen to understand, you are transforming it.

What the Best Communicators in Corporate India Have in Common

In my years of training professionals across sectors — from manufacturing to IT, from banking to education — I have noticed that the highest performers share one uncommon trait: they are deeply comfortable with silence. They ask a question and then wait. They do not rescue the other person from the discomfort of thinking. They trust the silence to do work that words cannot.

"Listening is not what happens when your mouth is closed. It is what happens when your mind is open."

— Avinash Chate, The Winning Edge, The Champion Mindset

This is a learnable skill. It is not a personality trait reserved for introverts. Some of the best listeners I have trained are naturally high-energy, fast-talking, expressive personalities — they simply learned to channel that energy into asking better questions rather than delivering longer answers.

Bring this to your team. I run communication and active listening focused corporate training and keynotes for companies across Pune, Mumbai and all of Maharashtra.

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Frequently Asked Questions

How do I know if I am a bad listener at work?

The fastest way to find out is the experiment described in this article: record a real conversation with consent, then measure how long you speak versus how long the other person speaks. If you are speaking more than 50% of the time in a discovery call, a counselling session, or a one-on-one with a team member, your listening needs attention. Other signs include frequently finishing others' sentences, preparing your reply while they are still talking, and receiving feedback that colleagues or clients do not feel heard.

What is a good talk-to-listen ratio for sales professionals in India?

In a sales discovery call — the first conversation where you are trying to understand a prospect's needs — you should ideally be speaking no more than 30% of the time and listening at least 70%. In a demonstration or presentation call later in the cycle, the ratio can shift, but even then, pausing to invite questions and reactions keeps the client engaged and surfaces real objections that you can address. The 30:70 ratio is the benchmark I set in my sales communication workshops across India.

Can listening skills actually be trained, or are some people just naturally better listeners?

Listening is absolutely a trainable skill. The Rashmi and Payal experiment is proof of this: two experienced professionals changed a deeply ingrained habit — overtalking — within weeks, simply by introducing measurement and setting a deliberate target. In my corporate training sessions across Pune and Mumbai, participants routinely improve their listening ratios significantly over a four-week practice period. Natural temperament plays a small role; disciplined practice plays a much larger one.

What is the single most practical thing I can do today to listen better?

Ask one more question before you offer any solution or advice. In your very next client conversation, colleague discussion, or team meeting, commit to asking at least one follow-up question after the other person has finished speaking — before you say anything else. This single habit breaks the reflex of premature solution-delivery, signals genuine interest, and almost always surfaces information you would otherwise have missed. Pair this with weekly recording reviews as described in this article and you will see measurable improvement within a month.

The story of Rashmi and Payal is not just a lesson in counselling — it is a mirror held up to every professional who communicates for a living. If you want to close more sales, lead more effectively, and build deeper client relationships, start by recording yourself and confronting your real listening ratio. The number will surprise you, and the change it triggers will not. If you want to accelerate that change with structured training, I invite you to reach out at avinashchate.com/contact, explore our corporate training programmes, or learn more about my approach to behavioural training in Pune.

This article is adapted from my book The Winning Edge, The Champion Mindset.

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Avinash Chate India's Leading Corporate Trainer | TEDx Speaker | Author With 1000+ organizations trained including RBI, JSW Steels, and Ferrero, Avinash Chate delivers high-impact corporate training across India. Creator of the KITE Leadership Framework and bestselling author of "The Winning Edge." Website YouTube

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By Avinash Chate — Maharashtra’s #1 Corporate Trainer & Motivational Speaker. Published 2026-06-27.