Ed Percival, known by those in the coaching community as, simply, “Yoda”, was the greatest of the many mentors I have had in my life, someone who taught me so much about the deeper layers of understanding self and others. Today I am reminded of one of his teachings, so this post provides my own mentoring to you on levels of listening.
A beginning level of listening is to listen with the intent to understand, not to reply. Start there and you will be “active listening”, unlike regular conversation where one is simply waiting for a chance to share whatever thought comes into your head to reply with to the other person.
Next, an anchor and tip to develop to and beyond that level is to “hold your thoughts loosely”. Let the question come to you, and then you will leave your mind clear to listen more deeply.
The next level is to “Listen for Energy“. The blog linked here gives some of my own thoughts in detail, but Ed was far more elegant and concise with me. Back in early 2015 (a few months before he died), I had a coaching session with Ed Percival. These are my notes from that session, a truly elegant way for a coach to avoid telling when a client says “tell me what to do”.
Sorting energetic responses from ordinary responses
When a client is asking you “tell me what to do”, you CAN do that for them without knowing the answer… get them to tell YOU the answer.
How? by sorting energetic responses from ordinary responses.
Ask them “what options are you considering to resolve this ?”.
Listen, as they tell you their options, for energetic context.
As you listen, feel which one is the one with SMOOTH energy, that FLOWS.
For that one, dig deeper, “say more about” about that option.
At this point, if you’ve hit the one with the smooth, flowing energy, that is the answer… just work with them around it, going up and down in context.
Thank you, Yoda.