Hi guys, in my last posts I discussed about “The arc of the coaching” and about “Coaching focus”. I want to devote next two blogs about listening levels and what´s going on in the coach´s mind. I want to present a good framework that helps coaches to develop their listening skills - “Levels of listening”. The framework can be found more in details at the school of co-active coaching, but it was brought to me by Lyssa and Michael. This framework presents three levels of listening, let´s take a look at them…
Level I - Internal Listening
It´s about me, me, me, me. At this stage, everything what the coach listens to, is about himself/herself. The coach might be present and might be playing some attention to a speaker, but everything what the speaker says, is interpreted by the coach´s lens.
Level II - Focused Listening
Hard-wired connection. At this level there is a strong connection between the coach and the speaker. The coach is fully concentrated on listening what the speaker says. At this stage, the coach listens and responds in the moment with questions and silence that help the speaker to move through his/her problems.
Level III - Global Listening
Everything in the environment is used, including your intuition. At the level III, the coach uses everything available in the environment to perform his coaching session. For example, the speaker´s tone of voice, body language, emotions, etc., all these can be used by the coach. Like Lyssa and Michael say “this is where intuition lives”. This is the highest level of listening.
During a coaching session it´s normal to go trough different levels of listening, especially new coaches will spend a lot of time on Level I. It´s ok, but if they are aware they can always try to jump to level II. As soon they become more mature, they will spend less time on Level I and move towards level II and III. Lyssa and Michael tell us that a good way to increase the time that coaches spend on level II and level III is to enter each conversation with a fresh mind. We never know what the person will say, so be fully concentrated on a speaker to fully understand him/her.
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Thanks,
Luis
