Listen Up!

"Active listeners notice what's said. Deep listeners explore what isn't said." - oscar trimboli

For coaches, the quality of our questions is an obsession, the mountain we aim to conquer. Our role is to help clients build their capacity to address challenges or find their way through change. We seek to understand our client by asking the right questions. Questions, we learn early on, that are concise and powerful. 

Can you ask a question in seven words? Or five words?  

As coaches we seek to ask questions so precise that they unleash profound client insight and self-awareness.

Yet this obsession with asking questions leaves behind the importance of listening.

I had not previously paid much attention to my listening. If clients felt I was attentive, asking good questions that prompted insights and next steps, then I was doing my job as a coach. Better yet, other coaches said I was a good listener. 

As it turns out, paying attention to others is part of listening.  

But there is so much more. In a book club with other coaches we (re)read, discussed, and practiced the five levels of listening from Oscar Trimboli’s essential “how to listen.”  

When we listen to respond, we confuse hearing, a sense, with listening, an action. 

Like any transformative experience, attempts to explain the profound are never successful, especially when the insights seem obvious but feel brand new. Yet, just as we fail to see “the forest for the trees,” we often fail to understand the power of active listening. With the other coaches,, I was able to practice listening. At times, it seemed easy, perhaps too easy, and yet other times it was deeply revelatory and even emotional. And while the following insights might be obvious, I think they are worth sharing for anyone curious about how to be a better listener:

• Listening serves the speaker first. What?! This may sound upside down and inside out, but the act of speaking serves the speaker, the client, not you, the coach and listener. When answering a question, the client is speaking out loud, and in verbalizing their learning, they will listen and find their understanding and direction. Too often, we listen to understand (or worse yet, listen to respond), asking follow up questions too quickly, cheating the speaker of the value of the insights gained through their own words.

• What is missing? What is missing, invisible, or assumed?  Too often, as listeners, we ignore the back story, which provides important context. In addition to understanding where a speaker is coming from, clues such as pronouns, shifts in facial expression, and energy tell us a great deal about how the speaker is processing while speaking. Silence, whether a patient pause or discerning moment, can be as powerful as what is said.

• Listening is a sport. Listening is active. Like writing, meditation, playing an instrument, like so much of what we do, listening is an active practice that, with intention and repetition, improves. It is amazing how easily we default to listening for understanding, or worse yet, listening to respond. With listening, as with any practice, we accept gradual, continuous improvement over sudden leaps of brilliance.

• Center your speaker. Listening can be hard, especially when employing new techniques. Centering your client is always a good place to begin and return to.  Listening without judgment or the need to respond brings the listener back to the initial context, where active listening can begin again.

• Practicing listening  One of the best parts of the book club was practicing listening. If you don’t have others to practice with, you can use the exercises for active practice that Oscar includes at the end of each chapter in his book or listen to one of his many podcasts about listening (a meta moment!). 

Curious about learning more about listening from Oscar?  Sharinga variety of resources below in addition to his book, which sits on my desk for regular referral.

• Over 35,000 people have taken the Listening Quiz - a 4th generation research database of workplace listening issues to improve communication.The Deep Listening Assessment​ will help you identify your number one listening barrier and this Guide for Listening on a Zoom Video Conference is helpful for those hosting and coaching in our virtual world.

• I am a big fan of Oscar’s Deep Listening podcast – over 120 episodes featuring deep conversations about listening – and his 90-day challenge a weekly email to help deepen your listening practice.  

• The Ultimate Guide for Listening on a Zoom Video Conference – Host Version – Digital Edition