In an article I read by Dr. Bruce Schneider of IPEC Coaching, I came across his concept of 5 levels of listening.
1. No response – The other person simply ignores or walks away.
2. Disconnect – Person’s response has nothing at all to do with what was said to them.
3. Subjective – Person listens based on their agenda or needs.
4. Objective – Listener is completely focused on the person who is listening.
5. Intuitive – Listener is listening to all the sensory components and is intuitively connecting to the speaker’s true message. Listening to what is being said and not being said. Listening between the lines for the truth.
For me, the first three are dis-empowering and have no place in coaching. Number 4 is a good coach and number 5 is what great coaching is about. At ICA, all the coaches teach to strive for number 5, Intuitive Listening.
Angela Bird has a term I really like – “Listen until you don’t exist!”. By listening until you don’t exist, you will hear the gaps in the client’s story. Their truth is buried in their stories. The gaps give the coach an invitation to ask questions to bring the truth to the surface for the client to look at.
As a coach, some questions to ask yourself:
“Am I listening to respond or am I listening to understand?”
“Am I listening for the gaps in the client’s story?”
“Am I listening for the client’s agenda and what they are deeply committed to?
“Am I listening for the client’s willingness to take action to move forward to their goal?”
“Am I tuning in to what is not being said?”
“Am I listening at a deeper, internal level for the emotional dimension of the conversation?”
“Am I listening between/between the words?”
“Am I listening to the silences and the spaces and what they communicate?”
“Am I listening for repeating patterns of behaviors?”
“Am I listening for the reward structure beneath repeating patterns?”
“Am I allowing my questions to form naturally from my intuition or am I forcing them from ego?”
“Am I reflecting the client’s words, phrases back to them to obtain clarity for both of us and avoid interpretation?”
“What prevents me from deeply listening?”
I really like Laurene Vaughan’s description of trees as among the most powerful listeners on the earth. It’s definitely been my experience. Whether a tree or some other inanimate object, this creates a safe, impartial space and time to speak our truth and work it out in a manner appropriate for us.
Laurene also stated that listening becomes easier if you just relax in to it. Sometimes we listen too hard, we are too focused on the words, on what is being said at the surface and so miss the rest.
In going over this, I realize that for me, many times I let the conversation go out of focus and become fuzzy, and I just listen for what jumps out and grabs my attention, peaks my interest and curiosity, points out a discrepancy between what the other person is saying vs. doing, thinking vs. feeling. In listening this way, I sometimes hear a small inner voice in myself asking a question which is dead on when I allow myself to vocalize it in the moment it comes up. The process feels like it gets my ego out of the way and allows my intuitive, subconscious voice to speak, and it is amazing what comes out as an observation or question. It’s like I’m hearing it for the first time as I’m saying it.
So I’m going to rephrase Angela’s saying to “Listen until your ego doesn’t exist!”
