Your problem is you just don't flaming well listen!

I'll bet you have had that said to you.  If not, you probably don't listen!

How unfair.  How hurtful.  How I feel that on the inside and sense my anger hormones cooking up a good explosive stew.  Or maybe its true, the sports were just that much more compelling than voices off.

Of course you listen.  But to what?  And with what level of understanding?

The real problem is that so much information is present, our busy brains choose what to hear and what to ignore and most of the time this is an unconscious, and habitual process.  Without training, what is heard is pretty random stuff, ranging from noises off stage, to the inner voice arguing with what is being said, and all places in between.  Not much space is left for ascertaining meaning.  A whole profession of diplomacy has arisen to fill the gap where this might lead to war.

After non-judgement (which gets your opinions to quieten down giving you a chance to hear without interference), the next core skill of the coach is listening.  Some call it active listening.  I use intuitive listening, full attention listening, process listening, analytic listening, and, always listening with feedback.

In this post, I am going to try to get you started with listening skills.

First some headlines and then one bit of detail and some guidance....to get good at this you will really need to practice a lot.  I mean like as much as you might do with your favourite hobby or your profession!  A lot of a lot.

Here are some things from NLP texts and other sources to think about:

In the language:

Sensory frame

• Feelings - "I feel bad", can also be eating, "you want me to swallow that hook, line and sinker?" 
• Seeing - "I cannot see this working"
• Hearing - "That doesn't sound good to me"
• Think - "I can't process this right now"
• Tasting - "This leaves a bad taste in the mouth", or "Sweet!"
• Smell - "I smell a rat!"

Grammatical Distortion

• Deletion - "that really hurts me" What hurts and how it does it are deleted.
• Universals - "you will never change" An unlikely absolute!
• Nominalisation - "this relationship is not working." A relationship is a verb, not a thing, the way we are relating can be changed.
• Cause effect confusion - "When you look that way you make me mad."  Somehow pressing buttons on your insides...how exactly?
• Complex equivalence - "the way you looked when you said that tells me I just cannot trust what you say."  Maps unconnected things together - how can you tell what the look meant?
• Mind reading - "I know what you are thinking." Huh? You're reading my mind?
• Pre-supposition - "I know you won't like this."  Huh? You read my mind without me even speaking?
• Complex words - "I love you."  For me, a tidy house!  For you, candles at dinner.  Different meanings for the same word, kind of a mix of several of the above.

Conversational process

• Repetition - looping around an issue
• No pausing to check understanding
• Interruptions with "what I think"
• Dominant, submissive, indifferent
• Content transaction analysis - parent like, child like
• Logic, emotive, irrational
• Flowing or interrupted
• Ordered or jumping around
• Past, present and future orientation
• Use of method - metaphor, story
• Towards/away from orientation
• Validation - how do I know its right - inside? Others say so? Bit of both?
• Attention on self or others 
• "Modal" influence - obligations or possibilities, needs or wants?
• Big picture, details, bit of both
• Stressors - people, emotions, things, choices?
• Etc!!!

In the body

Sub-modalities

• Tone of voice
• Pitch, speed, volume
• "Colour" in the words themselves, e.g. level of descriptive or type of descriptive
• Changes in these

Physical features (more Eckman and psychology than NLP)

• Skin colour, showing emotion shift
• Eyes in particular for tells of emotion
• Eye direction (may show recall, creation, shame etc)
• Blink rate
• Breathing rate, big changes e.g. sigh, holding breath, very low breath, panting.
• Emblems (accidental emphasis, e.g. forms a fist)
• Changes in manipulators (e.g. rubbing an ear or cheek) or gesticulation
• Satir poses (blamer, placater, distractor, leveller, calculator body postures)
• Micro expressions and related non-facial physical movements (tension, relaxation)
• Crying, laughing
• Gross movement (very still, to walking around while talking)

In all of the above pick up on changes or on signs that conflict with each other.  Saying "I am very happy about this" said with a look of fear, a flash of red on the cheek or neck, and an increase in manipulators tells at least two stories at once. Both may be true but probably for different reasons.

In the atmosphere

Intuitive responses to your client, what do you sense or pick up?  In the way a yawn is contagious if you have rapport you may well sense something they are feeling:

• Fear
• Stress/tension
• Other emotions
• Rapport
• Sense of time
• Attention intensity - close up, hear the traffic outside?

It is impossible to pick up on all these and the many other factors that may be present.  With a bit of practice you might notice some of them, and they will tell you a lot.

If, as a coach, you are going to pick up the information you need, it is essential to "tune in" to the session and use your whole presence to pay close attention to the client's meaning.

Remember, your client will rarely really know their own meaning.  They probably come with a series of relatively unformed thoughts and related feelings that they wish to resolve.   Often after sessions with my coach, I have also gone out without knowing how or what has changed, just feeling a lot better.  I have learned to accept this too as a good outcome.  Understanding you are too stressed doesn't make you less stressed.  Understanding can be over-rated!

The most important thing as you start is to take time, to pause and reflect back to your client what you think you have understood and check your understanding.  This allows them to elaborate, correct or confirm and you can move ahead.  When checking, check all around - is this what you think, is this what it feels like for you, is this what the past present and future consequences are?  Is this what you want to speak out loud to me?

As your skills as a listener develop, your active involvement in the process will increase and intuition (the quick feedback of learned skills when they are needed) will improve.  But being listened to alone without any intervention or guidance is also a blessing rarely bestowed and a good place to start.

I'll come back to each of these areas in a bit more detail in later posts, and also cover some of the useful assumptions that you can make, straight out of neuro-linguistic programming, that may well help you be a more effective listener.

One of my favourites is confusingly called by Bodenhamer and Hall in their "Users manual to the Brain" selective restrictional violation and refers to a habit of conferring  human intention on inanimate things.   A great example is the comment "oh, those chocolate biscuits are calling to me!" used to weird effect in a recent chocolate bar ad.

Well, there you go, I can hear the Shiraz in the kitchen telling me to get a life, and a glass, so that's all for now.  Post up your experiences of deeper meaning below the shallow surface of communication and I'll come back with more detail in the next week or so on some of these ideas.

One final comment before the glass of wine.  Do you think it is ever possible to listen and understand without changing the meaning of what has been said?  A so called "clean process"?  Read the above, abbreviated, list of half-noticed features of communication again, check how many apply to your own communication and whether you have much control over them, and then answer my question.

Am I good enough? Non-judgement and self-acceptance in Coaching

At the heart of a coaching partnership is acceptance, without judgement, of my client.  In order to hold this attitude, I must also accept myself without judgement.  This coaching note is about non-judging, and seeks to address the question "am a good enough?" with a wholehearted "yes!"

As I think about what to write about this, I quickly realise what a huge subject this is.  So for now I am going to limit myself to a few sources for the thinking and then a quick parting comment.  I believe non-judging and self-acceptance are hard to achieve and I hope the following makes sense for you.

Why is non-judgement needed in coaching?
Judging, criticism, contempt, scorn - so often are the daily meat and drink of life.  So attuned are many people to rights and wrongs of others, that they read criticism in each expression (or think they do).  And more painful and challenging than the external voices, are the internal ones; echo's of learned attitudes, past errors, failures, regrets; often disguised in the remembered tones of past authority.  Yet our voices, my voice, I, am talking to myself!

So many people come to see me damaged and dented.  They wear toughened and scratched carapaces for protection from the outside world.  And despite these protections, they can still hear the internal voice of doubt and scorn.  Self-doubt and self-scorn that undermine potential; holding back honesty, and action through fear of pain.

And what is on the inside, governs what comes out into the world.  From a critical internal world it is very hard to be non-critical of others.  From a cold and lonely internal world, it is hard to give warmth.  From an internal world that is fractured and unfamiliar, it is hard to listen with stillness and attention to the inner world of your client.   From a fractured self-confidence, it is hard to stand firm and let go of fear.

There is some good material on this in Deepak Chopra's "Seven Laws of Spiritual Success".   In the "Law of giving" he says and I paraphrase, what you pay attention to in your life will grow and flourish around you.  If you want receive money, be generous, as giving and receiving are just alternate parts of the same flow of energy and by taking part the flow increases rather than stagnating.  If you want love, be loving.  If you want happiness, bring happiness to others.   Watch out!  This is generalisation and while I have often found the comments above to be useful, I am not saying they are truths.

If you want something more scientifically validated than the philosophical Chopra, read Martin Seligman's "Authentic Happiness", for research based psychological material.  In here you will find that "judgement" is just one of a wide range of  "signature strengths".  These read a little like philosophical virtues, and in Seligman's psychological research, 25 are suggested.   Watch out again.   Good science knows its limits too.

His research attempts to show that the strategies that people adopt that make them happy are not the opposite of those who are more unhappy, they are simply different.  Key to happiness (rather like Chopra's comment), is putting time and energy into your character strengths.  Judgement is only one of these, alongside curiosity, wisdom, courage, playfulness, fairness, etc.  Criticism and judgement is overplayed!  [There is a great deal of published research on www.authentichappiness.com and a whole coaching programme around happiness available for those with greater interest, plus tests you can take yourself to find your level of optimism your signature strengths and other useful psychological profiles].

Finally I might point you to "Blink" by Malcolm Gladwell, in which he shows, via experiment, that a high presence of stonewalling, criticism, contempt and scorn correlate very highly with divorce for couples and being sued for professionals.

Fundamentally I do not believe that coaching, outside of the teaching and practising new knowledge and skills, is of any great use.  However a coaching relationship is very helpful, as it provides a space for self-exploration and self-coaching.  In my experience, all of my clients have found the resources they needed to deal with their difficulties and opportunities, and our relationship has been an important creative element in this discovery.

So far as I can understand, what is going on is that, by accepting them as they are, and focussing on them and their issue, by keeping judgement out of the arena, listening and being calm, their mental state seems to change.  More confidence and calm arises, more trust to speak about the things they fear and hide from, more openness, and :  More Acceptance of Themselves As They Are.

Once this acceptance begins to arise, it becomes possible for them to begin to act in a new direction which can be more helpful.

This is a huge and complex subject and I have not done it any justice (judging).  Suspending criticism and judgement is probably not possible for most people, certainly if it is a core signature strength for you (in which case, if I am right, coaching may not be a strength).

As I have said before, the important thing is to be aware of it, to notice your judgements and criticisms of your client arise, and to be able to choose to keep silent, keep listening and to keep them at bay at least until you have more fully understood what is going on.  A good way to do this is to confirm understanding without commenting critically.  It will at least distract you from giving your opinion!

Self-awareness is the first step, and requires some self-exploration.  Awareness of others at a deeper level can then begin.

Emotional-physical states are "catching" in a group of people.  A yawn breeds a yawn, anger or contempt leads to a fight, enthusiasm brings excitement, moving leads to following.  There is plenty of verifiable research on all of this, and you may well have noticed it yourself.

If you are going to coach, make sure you can influence your own state of mind, as it will affect your client and the outcome of the session powerfully.  And the first lesson is, be happy with yourself and it will allow others to become more happy with themselves too.

Happiness breeds laughter.  Laughter breeds happiness.  Learn to smile at yourself with good humour and deep affection.  You may find that accepting smile reflecting back out as strongly as the warm sun.  ;-)