Welcome back to our Summer Series exploring the core competencies outlined by the International Coaching Federation (ICF). In this article we delve into the pivotal competency of Listens Actively. As coaches, our ability to listen actively is fundamental to building strong, trust-based relationships with our clients. This competency goes beyond merely hearing words; it encompasses compassionate understanding and responding to the full spectrum of communication expressed by the client.
Defining Active Listening
Active listening is an engaged and deliberate process where the coach is fully present, acknowledging, responding, and observing what the client is saying. It involves more than just our ears, however; it includes paying attention to the client's words, emotions, energy shifts, and non-verbal cues. The coach not only listens to what is said but also to what is not said, capturing the essence of the coachee's message on multiple levels.
The Importance of Active Listening
Active listening is crucial in coaching for several reasons:
- Building Trust and Rapport: When clients feel truly heard, they are more likely to open up, creating a safe and trusting environment.
- Uncovering Deeper Insights: Active listening supports coachees to identify underlying motivations/values, emotions and beliefs that may not be immediately apparent.
- Effective Communication: It invites the coach to respond with meaningful observations or questions, facilitating a more productive coaching dialogue.
How does Active Listening show up in our practice?
Active listening involves several key elements:
- Customised Questions: What we learn about the coachee through active listening allows the coach to move beyond generic inquiries and instead to offering questions that reflect the coachee's unique situation and language.
- Attention to Words: Listen carefully to the words the client uses. Recurring themes, specific terminology, and shifts in language may indicate a change in perspective or emotion.
- Welcoming Emotions: Be open to the coachee's emotions. What is the explicit expression of feelings and the underlying emotional currents that may not be directly stated.
- Energy Shifts: Observe changes in the client's energy. Sudden enthusiasm, hesitation, or changes in tone and pace of voice are all information about what is happening with the coachee.
- Non-Verbal Communication: Body language, facial expressions and other non-verbal signals, often reveal more than words alone.
- Summarising and Reflecting: Offering a summary of what the coachee has shared can confirm understanding and invite the coachee to reflect on their position from a different perspective. It supports the coachee to hear their own thoughts more clearly.
- Allowing Silence: Embrace silence in the conversation. Silence offers coachees the space to think deeply and express themselves more fully without feeling rushed.
What might you need to Listen Actively?
To master the art of active listening, coaches may need to invite certain qualities and practices to their work:
- Presence: Being fully present in the moment is essential. Minimising distractions and being able to focus entirely on the client during the session will support active listening. Some coaches have a grounding technique before a session, others practice mindfulness as a method of cultivating inner peace and calm.
- Curiosity: Approach each conversation with genuine curiosity. Understanding the coachee's world with a beginner’s mindset reduces the number of filters that we may have constructed through our years of lived experience.
- Compassion: Develop your levels of empathy to connect with the coachee's feelings and experiences. How compassionate are you to yourself as a coach? How forgiving? It is through the work we do on a personal level - fostering a deeper level of understanding and trust in ourselves - that allows us to offer the same to our coachee.
- Patience: Allow conversations to unfold naturally without rushing to conclusions or solutions. As the saying goes: if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go further, go together. Patience, time and space for your coachee invites them to fully express and discover what it is that they want, moment by moment.
Enhance Your Active Listening with Emotional Engineering
Understanding and managing emotions are integral to active listening. At Nova Terra we provide workshops on Emotional Engineering (Levels One, Two and Three) hosted by Izaskun Bernal. These workshops are designed to support coaches, leaders and HR professionals enhance their emotional intelligence and thereby listening skills, enabling them to connect more deeply with their clients.
Active listening is not just a skill, or a science, but an art that can transform your coaching practice. It invites empowerment, builds stronger relationships and facilitates meaningful change.
