The inner work of listening

“The human mind seems to work best in the presence of reality. The brain that contains the problem probably also contains the solution. If the conditions are right, the huge intelligence of the human being surfaces. Ideas seem to come from nowhere and sometimes stun us.” — Nancy Kline

Michael was four months into his development as a coach and was attending his first supervision session. He remarked:

“I just find that as my coachee is talking to me, I am trying to figure out the best question to ask them, and then I see that I have not really listened to what they have just said. This means I am now doubting my ability to ask the right question and have an impact.”

Like Michael, new coaches often believe the magic lies in the question, and search or rehearse a magical question that they believe is key to unlocking a deep realisation in the coachee, and creating a transformational shift.

Questions are of course an important tool for coaches to create insight and change — but as the example above shows, a challenge lies in the fact that when we are forming questions before the coachee has finished speaking, we have stopped listening.

If this is happening, the dialogue may often be experienced as disjointed by the coachee — for example, when they are are talking about something important, and their coach follows up with a question that is unrelated to what has just been shared. Or it may feel like a game of ping pong, where the coachee just finishes sharing and then the coach’s next question is served — meaning there is no space for the emergence of deeper insight.

Through the new coach’s experience of this discomfort, and the embodied realisation that our constructing of the questions is the interference, we truly understand that we cannot multi-focus. We learn that our questions are not something that we memorise, like a script. Rather, our questions arise from the magic in the middle: the listening space.

In a time-pressured workplace, coaches can often feel the pressure to perform, and the urge to speed up is infectious, meaning the desire to rescue and find the solution for the coachee is the driving force of the coaching dialogue. When this is the driving force, we are ‘listening to fix’ or, even worse, listen from a place of protection.

In time and through practice, coaches learn that the art of coaching is in fact an inner movement of listening, and when we take this approach, the coachee’s being is met with a deep compassionate presence — and something begins to shift and change. This movement enables the coachee’s processing to slow down, so they come into presence and can fully understand what is happening for them; they enter a deeper reflective space.

Once a coach understands this listening approach, they trust that their question arises from a reflective space, a listening space: Peter Senge describes this as generative listening (see quotation below) and we refer to it as compassionate listening.

“To listen fully means to pay close attention to what is being said beneath the words. You listen not only to the ‘music,’ but to the essence of the person speaking. You listen not only for what someone knows, but for what he or she is. Ears operate at the speed of sound, which is far slower than the speed of light the eyes take in. Generative listening is the art of developing deeper silences in yourself, so you can slow your mind’s hearing to your ears’ natural speed, and hear beneath the words to their meaning.” — Peter Senge

To create a capacity to listen compassionately, the coach needs to learn ways to pause and create an inner stillness: this is the same training as mindfulness, where we keep coming back into presence when we are listening. By practicing this inner movement, it is the place where we feel and experience the coachee beyond their words, what is said and what is unsaid, and yet expressed through their emotional energy, their non-verbal and facial cues.

It is from this space, this inner clearing that we create, that our coaching questions evolve from. Learning to pause and listen compassionately is our entry point into this space.

“Create a clearing in the dense forest of your life and wait there patiently.” — Martha Postlethwaite

So, next time you are in a coaching session and are distracted in finding the right question, remember the inner movement of listening compassionately by pausing. This acronym can help you:

P – PRESENT
A – ATTUNE
U – UNPLUG
S – SENSE
E – ENQUIRE

1. Present – Change your posture by sitting upright, come back to a sensory anchor such as the felt sense of your feet on the floor. Take a conscious breath or two as a way of creating an inner clearing from your dialogue and setting aside assumptions. 

2. Attune – With curiosity and interest, shift your focus, be fully attentive to your coachee, notice and track their non-verbal cues, facial expressions and at the same time notice and track your felt sense and how you are impacted by what you are hearing.

3. Unplug – Continue to use your sensory anchor and breath to let go of any assumptions and inner dialogue, coming back to being present as you continue to compassionately listen.

4. Sense – Utilise empathic reflection as a way of demonstrating what you have heard, seen and experienced as you have been listening to your coachee as a way of helping them to connect to their deeper meaning.

5. Enquire – Now let a question emerge from this listening space.