Build Listening Skill as a Coach

And at this point I don't use any kind of AI summary tool or anything like that. Well, I really appreciated the question and I'll come back to the part where she talked about my ability to remember details from previous conversations. But I think the question of what makes a coach a great listener is a very important one, because I don't really believe there's just one kind of great listener, I believe that all of us can become more effective in our listening, in our coaching sessions.

but it won't look the same for all of us. I believe there are principles that apply to listening in every situation, but the specific application of those principles will vary depending on who we are, who our clients are, and what the promise of the coaching experience is. I have a strongly held belief that one of the biggest reasons people engage with coaches and with therapists is that we listen better and more deeply.

Then the people that are in our clients lives, they may have great people in their lives, but most of the people that are in their lives are people that have some sort of skin in the game. They need something or want something from our client. And this is true of all of us. This is true of me and my relationships. This is true of the people that I love in their relationships with me and others. This is a very human thing that we do tend to have skin in the game in our relationships.

And it does impact our ability to listen deeply. And with pure, maybe not quite pure, but with real compassion, real neutrality. I believe that the ability to listen deeply and listen well is the most important skill that a coach develops. But exactly how we develop that skill and exactly how we apply it will vary depending on our own disposition and, and what promises we've made to our clients. So let's talk about it.

Of course, we've all heard some of the standard truisms or platitudes about listening. I am all for those things like listen actively and don't listen to respond. But I want to talk about these things in the specific context of a coaching session let's start here. The question for you to ask yourself first is what is your definition of coaching? Do you view coaching as primarily a talking thing or primarily a listening thing?

Of course, it's not one or the other but which way does your bias lean? I view coaching as more of a listening thing than a talking thing. Of course, there's some irony in that coming out of my mouth because I am such a talker I talk All the time. My wife listens to me talk all the time when I'm in a group of friends. I'm loud. I'm making jokes. I'm laughing loud. I'm not usually the person in a social setting to sit back and be quiet. Many of you probably are. That's not me.

I'm a loud guy in many settings, but there are some settings and in particular in my coaching sessions. Where I'm very quiet, maybe if I'm honest with myself, sometimes too quiet. Sometimes I think I listen too much. But we'll come back to that. The first question you've got to ask yourself is do I view coaching as primarily a talking thing or primarily a listening thing? Now, even though I just said that I believe coaching's greatest attribute is the deep.

Neutral to compassionate listening that it offers clients. I also understand that there's another way of being in coaching that does involve more talking, more teaching, more training. And that's totally great. That can be the business that you're in. That's why I ask you to ask yourself the question, Do I believe that my job is more talking or more listening?

If you believe that your job is more talking, Then the listening you do will be more in service of confirming that your listener is understanding what you're attempting to impart so that you know, whether you're doing the job that you promised, you're probably in some sort of a training or teaching situation. And in that setting, your job is to transfer knowledge.

Maybe to transfer enthusiasm and in that case the most important thing the listening does is confirm that the learner is Capturing what the teacher intends so that the teacher can continue with the teaching or adjust the teaching as needed but if you view the job of coaching as more listening than talking, then I would encourage you to embrace the idea that listening is a skill. To be built and to be refined over time. I do think I was a born listener. Now that's not a brag.

And the reason I want to say it's not a brag is that sometimes when we describe good friends, we say, Oh, they're just such a good listener. And I agree. That's a compliment. I appreciate my friends who give me that gift. But when I say, I think I was a born listener. I remember specific experiences like one in high school where a very good friend of mine had been through a very hard time, a time that was difficult enough that she'd had to leave school for a while.

And I remember sitting in a classroom with her probably after school one day, and she was telling me the story. Of her difficulties and her time away from school. And I remember the experience of listening to her and how much I enjoyed it, how meaningful it was to me. And even more than that, I remember that near the end of that conversation, she thanked me for listening so well. And told me how much it meant to her. Now, at this point, we're 17 years old. This is my senior year of high school.

I look back on that experience and I say, okay, even that kid, all those years ago, that's almost 30 years ago. He liked to listen. So I do think it's built into me. My early professional experience strengthened. My enthusiasm and my ability as a listener. My very first sales job was in a call center. It was a call center where we were selling. Ironically, we were selling coaching and the coaching was quite expensive.

And my job in the sales process was to do initial conversations with prospective clients. And find out what difficulties or pains they were experiencing and how, and trying to make a connection to how the coaching we offered could be a solution to the pain they were experiencing. So it wasn't my job to make a sale for at least the first couple of years in that job. It was my job to deeply understand.

Understand where the prospective client was, how they were feeling and what might move the needle for them, what might help them feel enthusiastic about the offer we were going to make. So what that looked like in practice was me sitting in a bank of cubicles with 150 other sales reps in a very loud call center with an old school headset on my head, with my Hands cupped over my headset, with my eyes closed, my elbows on my cubicle desk, listening.

deeply to try to understand what is this person thinking? What is this person feeling? What is motivating this person? Are they engaged with what I'm saying? Are they apathetic toward what I'm saying? Are they telling the truth? Are they holding back? It was in that call center that I got my first real experience listening to what are called paraverbal cues. Paraverbal cues are silence and Sounds that are not words, but that do communicate information.

So these are ums and ahs and hmm, and silence pauses the length of the pause. Now, am I claiming to have some sort of scientific ability to say that Oh, a pause of this many seconds indicates something. No, of course not. Of course not. And I'm not some super human savant when it comes to this stuff.

All I'm saying is if I think about being at that job for almost four years, And in that time, there was an expectation that we would be on the phones 15 to 20 hours per week, actually talking to prospective clients even if I round down, I end up with in the neighborhood of 2, hours of listening. Now, of course, I was also talking. But 000 hours of deep listening. And I know it was deep listening because my paycheck depended on how effective I was. It was commission only sales.

So my ability to hear and to respond to what the prospective client was saying was a big factor in whether I made any money that week. And there were weeks that I made no money and there were weeks where I made good money. My skill in listening. Mattered from there. I went into coaching and now I probably have another 2, 500 hours of Coaching experience and in that coaching experience. I pride myself on Listening a lot and listening. Well now what does listening? Well mean to me?

Listening well means not being scared of silence first and foremost. I'm not scared of silence. I'm not scared of a pause. When I'm coaching, I'm using my client's body language and then their paraverbal signals. to tell me how to respond, including how long to pause before replying, how fast my pace of speech should be in replying to them, what tone of voice to use, what volume of speech to use. Don't get me wrong. I don't have some formula that I'm using to.

Turn knobs and pull levers and twist dials as I'm talking to my clients. Of course, it's all very instinctive But I'm aware of it as it's happening. I'm aware of thoughts that sound like this. Oh, he's He's pretty uncomfortable right now or she seems dysregulated Oh her face is doing a certain thing that indicates something to me. Oh, her breath is a certain way She's talking fast. Oh, the emotion seems to be very close to the surface I'm observing all of that and it's impacting how I reply.

I will try to prove to my clients that I'm listening both now and that I was listening in previous sessions. When I say things like, Hey, by the way, just setting aside what we're talking about for a minute. I want to tell you that I'm noticing a real difference in your energy today. And it's not contrived, it's not formulaic, it's just when I see it, I say it. You seem up today, or you seem open today. You seem energized today or the opposite. Hey, you seem down. Am I misreading this?

What's going on? Is there anything particular weighing on you today? Maybe that we're not even talking about right now. These are ways for me to signal that I'm paying attention and that I always pay attention. I'm willing to be wrong I'm open to them saying, Oh, I actually know I don't have any idea. I feel the same as always. I feel fine. I feel good or whatever they might say. I'm willing to throw out a question like that and have it not pay off in some meaningful way.

I'm not trying to get my clients to comment on my deep insight, my incredible awareness or my special cleverness. Sometimes I struggle when I hear coaches use words like intuitive or intuition, not because I don't believe in those things, but when I hear a coach describe herself or himself as especially intuitive, there is a little question in my mind that says is that coach attempting to manipulate their client into commenting on their intuitiveness.

Does the coach want the client to say, Oh, you just know how to read me or you're so intuitive or whatever. I can, that's not a bad thing necessarily, but if the coach starts to really buy into a view of themselves as deeply intuitive and starts to advertise that. It seems like sometimes we're a short walk over to a coach claiming to be some sort of clairvoyant and it does happen. And I am willing to say on this podcast that I am not in favor of that.

Now if I have clairvoyance in the audience, well, I suppose you knew I was going to say that anyway. Didn't you? Just kidding. My point is. I want to make guesses based on my experience and instinct, and I want to share those guesses with my clients. I want those guesses to signal not that I'm so deep or so insightful, but that I'm paying very careful attention.

And even when my guesses are wrong, Guesses about their current emotional state or why they might be thinking or feeling what they're thinking or feeling I'm willing to have those be wrong because even when they're wrong I think they signal to my client that I'm paying very careful attention I want them to believe and I want it to be true that I'm Listening hard and listening deeply and that I'm effortful in the attention that I'm paying I think this is crucial for building trust and rapport

with a client. I don't have a lot of clients who come back to me necessarily and tell me, Oh, you're such an amazing listener. None are really coming to mind at the moment, actually. But I try to be that for my clients. I try to pay more careful attention to them than maybe anyone else in their life.

And in doing that, I'm hoping to build trust such that they feel comfortable revealing things to themselves above all else that they might not otherwise reveal, that they might gain insights that they might not otherwise. If I can give you a tip or a hack, although I don't think it's a hack to becoming a better listener for your clients. You've all heard that Active Listening 101 prescribes that when you listen, you don't listen with an intent to reply, you listen with an intent to understand.

And of course I agree with that. A way that you can actually do that more easily is by listening to what your client is saying and attempting to watch the movie in your mind that they are narrating. So when I'm talking to a client and they are telling me about an interaction with a loved one or a boss. Or a difficult conversation that they had, or a childhood experience. I'm actually watching the movie in my head.

So instead of preparing to react, I'm just watching a movie that disconnects me from judgment. It disconnects me from anxiety. And I think it changes my face. I think it changes my face and my body language such that. They may feel at ease. I have, a close friend who's also been a client for a good while now. And she told me once that when I'm coaching, my face is so neutral that sometimes she does wonder if either zoom froze or if I am still listening.

she said this in a very kind and complimentary way. And I took it that way, which is very nice of her to say, it did give me a little bit of a question about, okay, maybe I'm too flat in my expressions when I'm coaching a client, because I do want my client to know that I am listening and I'm listening with real intent. And maybe I should just tell them, Hey, I'm just over here watching the movie in my head, you're describing a scenario and it's unfolding in my mind.

And then as they conclude their description of the scenario, then I do switch back on curiosity, assessment or discernment, whatever word you like. Then I'm coming to them with questions about the movie I just watched. And in this way, I think I can be very effective. I think I can prove how deeply I was listening by making it clear to my client, I was watching the movie. I was seeing these characters interact. I was considering how those characters were feeling in that interaction.

And having done that, here are my follow up questions. It really helps. Watch the movie in your head. In that classic book, how to win friends and influence people. It's by Dale Carnegie. He says that the most interesting people are the most interested people. And I believe that that is a timeless principle. We will notice ourselves enjoying and feeling most comfortable around the people who listen to us best.

We will also notice ourselves feeling less comfortable around people who Talk more than they listen, who don't listen that well. Our anxiety will be higher around those people, especially depending on their anxiety level. Our boredom will increase if they're only interested in themselves. So coaching provides us with this incredible opportunity to almost industrialize.

The principle that the most interesting people are the most interested people as we make our clients and their stories and their experiences and their thoughts and their feelings. The most interesting thing in the world to us, they will feel it. The trust will be there. The insights will come more easily for them and the coaching will pay. And by pay, I mean, of course, payoff, but also it's a good way to get to continue to get paid as a coach. If you.

Really become a person who listens well who listens better than most of the people they interact with in their life so I Don't think you have to have a superhuman memory. I do have a very weird memory I've shared this before I remember odd facts odd details sentences from sometimes weeks months and years ago But I can't necessarily remember why I went into the kitchen. I don't think I'm unusual in that, especially as I age. I think as we age, that becomes a more common occurrence.

But I do have the ability to recall threads of conversations that happened weeks and months ago, sometimes years ago. I don't think that's a prerequisite for being an effective coach.

I think that if I didn't have that, and even though I do have that, I think my clients might be well served if I would at least experiment with some sort of AI summarization tool, with creating transcripts of my client calls, and then referring back to those transcripts because I have done that here and there and it does yield insight. So part of being a great listener could be a willingness to study the recordings of your calls.

Maybe you don't have to be the all time best listener in the moment. Maybe it's a willingness to record and to review the calls that you do and learn from those. But I don't think a superhuman memory is required. I think what's required is a belief that listening matters and is powerful. I think curiosity and care about your clients, their lives and their stories is powerful. I think silence is extremely powerful and I think watching the movie in your mind is powerful.

And if all of that is built on a belief that coaching is more about listening than it is about talking, we kind of can't go wrong. And with that, I will talk to you next time.