Levels of Listening

by Seth Sinclair

The famously taciturn President Calvin Coolidge once said, “no man ever listened himself out of a job,” but most people don’t really listen very well. 

On average, employees spend about a third of each working day listening to others talk.  Immediately after listening, most employees understand and retain about half of what they hear; after 48 hours, retention falls to about 25 percent.  For most employees, poor listening is a huge waste of time and a lost opportunity for information transfer—and it has a seriously negative effect on workplace relationships.  Imagine how disastrous it would be if a coach’s listening skills were that poor.

By contrast, good listening encourages intimacy, and makes people feel safe and secure.  Good listening is essential to developing both trust and strong coaching presence, as we mentioned in our posts on both subjects.  Great coaches are, without exception, great listeners—and great listening is a skill that can be learned.

The Coaches Training Institute (CTI), whose leaders developed a model of practice called “co-active coaching,” describes three levels of listening:

Internal Listening (Level 1): This type of listening is defined as “listening to the sound of their own inner voice.  (Listeners) may hear the words of the other person, but they are primarily aware of their own opinions, stories, judgments—their own feelings, needs, and itches.”  At this level, listeners are paying attention to their own interior dialogue: they’re hungry, they’re bored, they’re thinking about what they should say the next time there is a pause in the conversation.  In short, they are thinking about themselves, not the person with whom they are conversing.  CTI believes this isn’t a bad place for clients to be—the whole idea of the coaching experience is to focus on them and their needs—but coaches need to function at a higher level.

Focused Listening (Level 2): CTI calls this level “a hard focus, like a laser, from coach to client.”  They offer the example of two young lovers on a park bench: the rest of the world can do as it pleases, and they don’t care in the slightest—their full attention is focused on every word, every gesture, every nuance of the other person.  This is the level at which coaches need to listen and work—all the time.

Global Listening (Level 3): Listening at this level is equivalent to what performers do when they are performing: being attuned not only to words and gestures, but also to underlying moods and tone.  Comedians, especially, are very sensitive to how their words are being received, and whether their jokes are going over properly: if not, the best comedians will quickly change their set to adjust to the evening’s mood.  Coaches, too, need to be able to pick up on what’s not said by their clients—and to use that information to guide the discussion. 

In Level 3 listening, coaches should also be able to listen for organizational cues and context, not just cues from clients.  They should be able to pick up on and be in tune with the prevailing strategies and attitudes that make up their clients’ environment.  Being able to do this will help the coach and client to partner together in support of the organization’s goals.

CTI believes that coaches should function at levels 2 and 3 in all of their interactions with those they are coaching—but understands there are times when even coaches will fall back to level 1 and be thinking about their own agendas.  The trick is to recognize when that happens, and to find their way back to higher level of listening.  “Sometimes,” they conclude, “all it takes is asking a provocative, curious, question.”