42 LEVEL 1 - ME • Focus is on self • Listening through personal filters and judgments • Appropriate when gathering information for self LEVEL 2 - WE • Focus on self and other and back to self • Hears but not deeply listening • Listening with the intent to respond LEVEL 3 - YOU • Complete focus on other • Listening for meaning and feeling of what is being said • Listening for the essence of what is behind the words The Three Levels of Listening: The diagram illustrates the three levels of listening that we often engage in during conversation. PART FOUR - THE 5 CORE COACHING SKILLS Listening With the Intent to Understand Do you listen with the intent to understand, or do you listen with the intent to reply? Listening with the intent to understand means listening with your curiosity fully engaged. You become a student, open to learning while the other person speaks. This requires moving your own knowledge, perceptions and personal experience aside so you can truly hear what is being said and genuinely take in new information without putting it through your own filters. This also means being okay with not knowing and patiently waiting until answers, solutions and new awareness reveal themselves as the coachee speaks. Allowing the space for the coachee to come into their own learning by simply listening, teaches them to think and dip into their own well of resourcefulness. As a leader of others with the responsibility of objectives that must be met, this may be difficult to do as those objectives are always playing in the background of the conversation. As you become more proficient at listening with complete focus, you will find it easier to temporarily suspend your stake in the outcome and open to new learning from those you are leading and coaching. Strong leaders provide engaging environments where others are given meaningful opportunities to contribute. This begins with listening and learning from them! Listening Is an Active Skill Listening does not always mean sitting still in total silence. In fact, sitting still in total silence is only one of the ways we engage actively while listening. Take a minute to think about what is actually going on actively when you are engaged with someone you feel is truly listening to you. Perhaps they are leaning in with full eye contact. Or maybe they are nodding and giving non-verbal but audible cues that they are really listening. There are a variety of ways we let others know we are fully there and getting all they are saying, even beyond the actual words they are using. Here are a few of the most powerful active listening skills used in coaching: Reflective Listening Reflective listening is taking what the person has just said and reflecting it back to them. This is often used in coaching for impact and to allow the coachee to hear themselves and what they have just said. Reflective listening is also used to encourage the coachee to go deeper and
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