Empowering Listening
One part neuroscience. One part magic.
Questions are marvelous.
I’m a coach, after all. Questions are practically my job description.
I can offer you a powerful question and turn you loose to reflect, journal, and perhaps even discuss with other people. You’d come up with really good stuff!
A question can spark imagination, challenge thinking, or help to clarify. It’s clear that something is unlocking when you hear, “Ooh, that’s a good question…”followed by a pregnant pause.
The magic of coaching can only begin to take shape, however, where those powerful questions come together with empowering listening in service of you, the client.
Listening is how coaching truly alchemizes the client.
Listening can give the speaker the space to just be, permission to feel whatever may come, grace to answer imperfectly, agency to choose… Empowering listening is not only taking in the words given voice but witnessing the speaker’s entirety without judgment.
As I write about listening here, I know my definition and understanding will continue to unfold. I have much to learn about the science, for one. That’s not even considering all the room there is to explore the art and craft of listening, which must be infinite.
Yet, on a daily basis, I know I lose sight of this marvel. I flub listening. I move too quickly. I’m in my head. I get triggered.
Most recently, I’ve found it helpful to revisit the three levels of listening I learned in coach training, with an added layer of our current understanding of what’s happening in the brain for each of those levels.
Level 1:
This type of listening is how we make sense of the world. We are self-referential beings. In our current understanding of neuroscience, we essentially imagine or envision what we’re being told in order to understand it.*
We are using Level 1 listening when we take what we understand from that simulation, of sorts, and we make it about ourselves. We run it through our experiences, beliefs, values, and judgments and make sense of it through those filters.
One study found that, on average, people listen for about 15 seconds before starting to process – ‘How does that fit in with what I already know?’ ‘What do I think about that?’ ‘What does that mean for me?’
We’ve all heard the saying “listening to talk.” And while you might think, “I hate it when people do that! It’s so annoying and egocentric!” – we all do it…
All the time.
It’s Level 1 thinking.
Level 2:
When listening at Level 2, that self-referential thinking is turned way down. It’s still there, because it has to be for us to understand anything, but the jump to what it means for yours truly is minimized. This level is less about judgement based on your filters, and more about understanding what the other person is saying for what it means them.
Level 2 listening happens primarily in the left hemisphere of the brain. We process the individual words spoken. We register the content of what they say.
Most of what I see in leadership training or professional development related to listening gets to this level. We often call it active listening.
I’m quiet. Check! I make eye contact and nod my head. Check! Maybe lean in a bit. Check! I reflect what they said. Check, check, check!
This listening takes effort. It’s focused, and the listening tries to find what is meaningful for the speaker.
Honestly, in the swirl of activity and information of our days, Level 2 listening is relatively rare. It is meaningful to be on the receiving end of it, though. It tends to deepen understanding and connection. Interestingly, one study found that the perception of active listening activated the same reward systems in the speaker’s brain as those activated for financial rewards.
Level 3
This level is about “listening to what is not being said.”
This level requires intentional openness and presence in the moment to really take the other person in as a whole.
It’s less about picking up on specific details, and more about sensing the whole. Without consciously noting, we take in body posture; voice inflections, speed, and tone; pauses; and even weird, seemingly unexplainable intuitive connections or understanding.
Just like we can’t entirely turn off our Level 1 listening, the goal is not to turn off Level 2 listening here. Level 2 listening processes and analyzes the words in the left hemisphere of the brain, while Level 3 brings in the additional wisdom of the global, connecting perspective that is more in the right hemisphere of the brain.
The deepest, most empathetic, most transformational listening happens when all three levels are engaged and integrated.
* This is because we have something called multi-modal neurons. It’s also the reason athletes benefit significantly from visioning exercises. Whether you throw the ball, remember throwing the ball, watch someone throw the ball, imagine throwing the ball, or hear me say “I throw the ball,” the same neurons are firing. Interesting, right?!