Transcript

JULIA YATES

There are a wide range of skills that a good coach needs to foster, but if I was to pick one of those skills that I think really lies at the heart of coaching, it would be the skill of listening. And listening does lots of different things. One thing that listening does is it helps to develop the rapport and the relationship. And we know from the evidence about coaching, and about all sorts of other therapies, that the key to successful coaching outcomes lies in the quality of the relationship. And listening is at the heart of the relationships, so it's absolutely vital for developing the trust and the rapport that the individual needs.

The other particular value in listening is that it allows clients to clarify their thoughts. Thoughts usually, that are sort of running around our heads, are quite foggy, quite fuzzy, and not very well formed. And it's only in the process of articulating them, putting them into words, that we actually can crystallise what it is that we think. So if somebody is sitting and listening to us, that gives us the space to get our foggy, amorphous thoughts out of our minds and into a nice, clear, crystallised form.