Coaching Leaders [3 of 5]

Posted by Steve Saccone on Jan 26, 2012 in Blog | 1 comment

The best coaches are committed to listening. They learn to be genuine interested in others. They learn to importance of giving their undivided attention to coachees. These three characteristics are the foundation of excellent coaching.

To establish a coaching relationship that empowers someone, the coach must believe and recognize that people have embedded creativity, a high level of intelligence, and even that they almost always have the knowledge they need to succeed. What most coachees need is for a coach to help them access all this. And without deep listening, and even practicing the art of asking penetrating, poignant questions, it’s almost impossible to see what exists inside a person–for you or them.

Here are a few things that listening does in a coaching relationship:

Listening well helps people think more clearly, work through unresolved issues, and discover solutions that may already be inside them.

Coaching need to listen beyond what someone is saying in words. Listen for assumptions, and then help a person identify the false ones.  Assumptions and beliefs that shape action, and they are contained in almost everything we say. Pay attention to these and address them, point them out, help a person identify them through question asking. Once again, to see what lies behind words requires observant, attentive listening.

Listen to where people make observations, weigh in their opinions, and where he or she jumps to conclusions. This helps the coach understand a person’s values, which can open a door to all kinds of insights on why or how a person functions like they do.

Listen for gaps and inconsistencies in a person’s thinking process.

Listen for defensiveness, and where people are trying to protect themselves, distort reality, or even make excuses. Again, insights are found here as to where a person needs to change.

Asking questions that help people become aware of how their assumptions, beliefs, and attitudes may be helping or hindering them in getting the result they want can create opportunities for moments of genuine, even profound insight. Questions, often more than just giving answers, can penetrate a person’s illusions and delusions. They can force a person to think deeply in a way that nothing else can.

Listen to what someone has clarity on, and whatever they don’t have clarity on. Ask questions and engage that dimension of whatever issue at hand, striving to help someone create clarity. For instance, if someone is annoyed or frustrated with someone at work, as they talk it out with you, sometimes they realize that they need to give that person the benefit of doubt, or that they were not perfect in the situation either and they need to extend more understanding and compassion, or that they can see more why that person did what they did and that they didn’t intend to frustrate them.

To become an effective coach, you must build the foundation of listening in a coaching relationship. Trust will form. Relational capital will be built. And the greatest insights a coach can offer someone in effort to see real transformation happen almost always come from giving a coachee one’s undivided attention and listening in the most perceptive and attentive way.