Most of the time, when we are awake, listening continuously provides us with sensory inputs. Most part of it is unconscious listening. This may be people talking around me but not to me, people talking to me, traffic noise, constant hum of the tube lights / fans / Air conditioners, watching television, listening to FM radio at home or while in a car etc... Isn't it amazing that we consciously register only a very small portion of it. While I have attended many, and conducted a few training programs in and around this area, I perhaps started going deeper in this journey as I started getting trained as a coach and then started coaching.
While there are multiple facets to listening, this paper looks at listening from a four dimensional lens. These are not comprehensive and neither are they mutually exclusive. These are; a) Listening without judging, b) Acknowledging differences, c) Listening with understanding, and d) Listening from innocence.
1. Listening without judging
When I actually listen to a coachee, what happens? How do I listen to him / her? What are the thoughts which come in, as I listen? What am I thinking when the coachee is speaking? How often do I interrupt my listening while the coachee continues to speak to me?
In the past, when I listened to any other person, my mind used to be often busy in, a) judging what the other person is saying. I already know this. This will not work. He / She is at it again. We have tried this before; b) deciding on my response; and c) anxiety to express my views.
Now having become a coach, I realise that judging what the person is saying and listening are mutually exclusive. In the present moment, either I can be judging or listening, but cannot do both simultaneously.
And how do I normally judge? I do it by applying the filters of my beliefs, values, and prior experiences. I am actually listening from my past or my being, without recognising that no two people have the same set of beliefs, values and experiences.
So what do I do now? Just listen with an open mind, without trying to judge or evaluate the coachee. And I am able to better listen and understand the essence of what the other person is saying. When I listen with an open mind, without judging what the person is saying, but just listen and try to understand, what the person is really trying to tell me.
No two coachees are alike in terms of their values, beliefs, and experiences. How do these differences alter my listening? Two people watch an event simultaneously. Will they describe the event in the same manner? My description will focus on what I chose to notice in that event and my friend is likely to describe what he chose to observe. Which parts of the event, each one of us chooses to observe will depend upon our likes, dis-likes, values, beliefs and past experiences.
I vividly recall an incident at XLRI Jamshedpur, my management school. Prof E H McGrath scheduled a quiz for the batch of freshers, about 100 of us. We all assembled inside the small auditorium for the quiz. He started chatting with us, with no sign of a quiz. Suddenly we heard loud & wild noises, with the beating of drums and people running. A group of scantily clad tribal people entered from the back door, ran towards the front entrance, carrying objects like spears and sword. The whole incident was over in a matter of 2 or 3 seconds. It was, as if an earthquake had struck. Many of my fellow students started screaming, some jumped out of the window. One of them hid himself in the girls’ hostel! When things calmed down, and we found all of us safe, Father McGrath, gave us a sheet of paper and asked us to write a FIR on the incident. Once we finished writing, the so called tribal people came in, they were our seniors! They started reading the FIR's each one of us had written. No two FIR's described the incident completely or accurately. Some of the observations were; tribal people have attacked, tribals have come to kill Father McGrath, some saw a tribal girl leading the group while others did not see her, some saw the swords and spears while others did not see, the number of people reported varied from 7 to 20 etc... And we learnt a lifelong lesson, "What you see may not be the reality."
Now if 100 people can see one incident in different shades, shapes and sizes, imagine what happens when we listen to our coachees speak?
I have learnt two lessons during my coaching journey; a) no two coachees are same, and even if they use the same word, the meaning, context and the experiences associated with that same word would be different; and b) Coachee and I have different beliefs, assumptions, experiences, contexts and meanings.
When I operate using this lens, the coachee will feel listened to, speak out more freely, and communicate openly. This creates immense possibilities for the coach to serve coachees’ agenda.
In one of my recent coaching sessions, a key intention which a career woman created for herself is that she wants to truly "listen" to her 18 year old daughter. Such a simple act on the surface! But how many of us have listened in the recent past to the people we spend our lives with; at home, in office or in our neighbourhood? In building and nurturing relationships, listening with an intention to understand what the other person is saying, can transform the relationships and create an upward moving spiral of Joy and Fulfillment.
So as a coach, who is fully present for the client, I say to myself; "Here I am! And I want to understand what you are saying." If I listen from this perspective, my process of listening changes. This enables me to paraphrase what the coachee said, empathise with the coachee, stop evaluating, and ask powerful questions,
And what are the outcomes of such a listening? I am able to truly connect with the coachee and get under the skin of what the he or she wants to convey. I get connected at the level of heart.
Very often during the meetings in office, I used to listen to first one or two sentences, spoken by a particular person, and I would immediately conclude, what the person is going to say further, why that person will say so, what are the underlying motivations and self-interests of that person. And my listening would have anyway automatically stopped, inferences made by me, perhaps my body language displaying my mental state to that person and others present.
So what really happened? As soon as a person begins to speak, I bring out the own "lens", which I have in my mind, of that person, and start listening (or not listening) or talking (or not talking), to that person speak, through that lens. And the end result of the conversation would be along the similar lines as in the past. There is staleness and no newness, already always listening, past creeps into the present, and what I create is only an extension or reflection of the past.
As a coach, I consciously practice listening to what the coachee is saying from a fresh perspective. It’s a new session, a coachee who is not the same, as who he / she was a week or a fortnight ago.
It’s listening from a state of "Innocence." Now innocence to me is more of a way a child listens, a child whose listening has not yet been conditioned by the external environment. Innocence means being fully present for the coachee, without any kind of lens, like that of the pristine transparent waters of a stream flowing down a hill, after a good rain, with all the dirt settled in the past, already washed away. Listening from innocence to me now means; a) wanting my coachee to tell me more, and b) truly wanting to seek to understand the essence of what the coachee is saying. It also means to listen with no judgement, no self-talk, and just listen to the words, feelings, body language, eyes, tone, and essence of the coachee.
Only if I provide such listening environment to my coachee will I be able to facilitate generation of possibilities, insights, options and actions, by my coachee. So what do I do now? Just listen to the coachee with an open mind, listen with intent, listen with my eyes, listen with my heart, and listen with my one hundred percent mental presence.
