2 Listening

The act of consciously creating connection through building rapport sets the scene for really attentive listening. The good news is that if you focus all your attention on to someone else in order to be able to respond to their body language and voice, then you are already a long way towards being in a state of mind where you are able to really listen to them – because your focus is on them rather than on yourself.

Ask yourself: how often do you feel someone is really focused on you, is fully present with you, during a working day? And how often are you really listening to or being present with someone else? We are beset with distractions.

• External distractions include ambient noise: phones ringing, colleagues talking, computers that go ‘bing!’ as each email arrives, mobile phones − to name a few.
• Internal mental distractions are created by our busy schedules – the frustrating meeting we have just been to, the daunting meeting coming up, the numerous matters needing our attention.

Then there are the ways we can distract ourselves during a coaching conversation. We might find ourselves worrying about ‘getting it right’ in various ways, or wondering if the coachee is valuing the session – self-doubt is a rich source of distraction from listening.

The way to become a better listener is to practise. The key areas are:

• Intent – setting out to be in rapport, pay attention and bring your attention back when you find yourself temporarily distracted – as you will inevitably be.
• Attention – practice becoming more focused on where your listening attention is really going – are you listening to what is being said with a view to understanding, or with a view to rehearsing your next question?
• Focus on their agenda, not what it means to you and your agenda. Sometimes we hear what someone says and in an effort to make sense of it we refer it mentally to things we understand ourselves. For example a coachee says they have got a dispute with a colleague and our mind immediately jumps to something like: ‘Oh yes ... I had a row with a colleague recently and what I did was ...’ This is sometimes called ‘level one’ listening, where our attention is really on our own thoughts, feelings and judgements rather than on focusing intently on the coachee.

The benefit to the coachee of really focused ‘level two’ listening, i.e. listening that is truly focused on them, is that they get to think better. Studies have shown that when someone is listened to attentively and non-judgementally they think better than when they are thinking on their own.