Open Doors – ElPropósito3 min de lectura

Active listening and potential

In coaching, one essential competency (though they are all essential) is active listening: the skill you develop and train to go beyond words and hear everything that is said, along with what is left unsaid. We all want to communicate effectively and, above all, with trust. Active listening is a door that, once opened, leads to the most powerful conversations we can have with another person. What does it take to listen better? Why is it worth developing? Do you need to be a coach to listen actively? The answer to that last one is no. You don’t need to be a professional coach. There are several steps toward this kind of listening, and the first is a very common word that is almost always misused: change.

One of the deepest changes we need to face when it comes to listening, and active listening in particular, involves the ego. The ego is active listening’s main enemy. It is the thorn buried deep inside us, the fear of staying quiet and the urge to look as if we know it all. I firmly believe the key that opens the door to genuine leadership is active listening paired with good questions. It is remarkable how the most inspiring people simply switch off their ego to connect genuinely with others, and that connection comes from listening. Talking will never get you there. So what does it mean to listen? It means paying attention to what is said and to what is not. To understand what is said, we have to quiet our own thoughts, which means switching off the ego. To go beyond words and read body language, we have to double or triple our attention. That is why the best training anyone can do for active listening is learning to be here and now.

You can’t listen unless you are here and now. Mindfulness understands this well; it may be the skill it most encourages us to train. We can never be 100% in the present, precisely because the present is an infinitely thin slice of time, which is why we spend most of our time thinking about the past or the future, one already gone and the other not yet here. So which of the three should we be in while we listen? The present. When someone opens up in a conversation, they do it trusting in reciprocity, and the most reciprocal thing we can offer is our presence. That presence shows in only one way, through listening, and real listening happens when we are actively and genuinely attentive to everything the other person wants to tell us.

What is the hardest part of active listening to develop? Empathy, without a doubt. To be empathetic we need to understand and validate what the other person is trying to say, and the only way to do that is through the quality of our questions. In cultures where asking questions is seen as a sign of ignorance, there is the least listening. People are expected to have all the answers, so they listen to reply. Active listening listens to understand. It aims to build solid relationships, to support the other person in making better decisions and, above all, to make them feel accompanied. Someone who brings enough empathy to a conversation shows deep regard for the other person. The world needs to be heard, and the great value of active listening is that it lets us partner with others as they open the doors to their full potential.

What does active listening mean to you?

Warm regards and all the best,

Rodrigo Baccaro

Author: Rodrigo Baccaro

Linkedin