Bountiful Books Newsletter

August 2005

I have quoted directly from my book to capture some of the salient points. Enjoy!

The Power of Listening:
an exerpt from Body-Centered Coaching
By Marlena Field

Few people have the experience of truly being heard. Fully listening to your clients is a wonderful gift that you can offer them. Listening is a complex activity which involves paying attention at many levels at the same time, so skillful listening takes practice. Being self-aware is the foundation for fully listening to another person.

Your way of being as a listener directly impacts your clients and has the power to impact them positively or negatively. Your clients’ feelings of safety, trust in self, self-esteem and potential for personal growth can be significantly affected by your level of good will, awareness and expertise as a listener. In this chapter, I will discuss the distinction between empowered and disempowered listening and the impact of each on your clients.

Disempowered listening negatively affects both the client and the coach. When we are listening to our clients, the moment we judge their choices, feel critical of their approach to a problem, compare them from our personal perspective or blame them in any way, we are disempowering them.

Oh, boy, here we go again!
I thought you weren’t going to do that.
I don’t think that’s possible.
I wish my life was like yours.

From this way of listening, it is impossible to fully hear the other person because our mind is full of our own reactions. We may be waiting for our turn to speak: being overtly or covertly impatient. We may be wondering if our fee is not enough or too much. We may be caught up in needing to be impressive or clever. This is self-aggrandizing.

As well, the moment we decide that our clients are in need of our help, we are disempowering them. We are no longer focusing on them but on ourselves. We perceive our clients as people who need fixing or need our guidance and advice. All of these thoughts limit our ability to listen and restrict our creativity with them.

A fixer has the illusion of being causal.
A server knows he/she is being used in the service
of something greater, essentially unknown.

We fix something specific.
We serve always the something:
wholeness and the mystery of life.

When you help, you see life as weak.
When you fix you see life as broken.
When you serve you see life as whole.

When we are listening in a disempowering way, our clients will have an innate understanding that they are not being heard.

People sense how we feel and what we think about them. They pick it up in their subconscious awareness and they respond accordingly. The information is in the energetic nuances between two people. We may be doing or saying all the right things but internally they will be reacting to the unspoken opinion we have of them. They will know if we are being nice to them for our own purposes rather than caring for them as people. They will intuit that we want to change or manipulate them to see things our way and they will often become resistant to us.

Clients may turn disempowered listening against themselves with thoughts like “I must be really boring for my coach not to want to listen to me.” They may start talking louder or faster to be heard. They may stop speaking and become quiet or they may become critical of us, either directly or passively.

“The point here is that we can sense how others are feeling toward us. Given a little time, we can always tell when we’re being coped with, manipulated, or outsmarted. We can always detect the hypocrisy. We can always feel the blame concealed beneath veneers of niceness. And we typically resent it. It won’t matter if the other person tries… sitting on the edge of the chair to practice active listening, inquiring about family members in order to show interest, or using any other skill learned in order to be more effective. What we’ll know and respond to is how that person is regarding us when doing those things.”

- The Arbinger Institute
- Leadership and Self-Deception

Empowered listening is a way of being, a way of being fully present – body, mind and spirit. Empowered listening is being curious and paying attention to our clients without anything else interfering in the process. With empowered listening we will hear the essence of what is being said and find ourselves whole-heartedly open to our intuition and creativity. We will be more present and receptive and be more natural, appropriate and creative with our responses. It is empowering for both people.

Empowered listening is not passive. Rather, it is being actively intentional, open-hearted, and fully engaged. There is a sense of being totally involved, of participating with our whole being.

“When listening to another person, don’t just listen with your mind, listen with your whole body. Feel the energy field of your inner body as you listen… You are giving the other person space – space to be. It is the most precious gift you can give.”

- Eckhart Tolle
- The Power of Now: a Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment

Empowered listening is profound as well as challenging to learn and practice. It involves a commitment to be the best we can be in service of another human being. As we listen with acceptance we will enjoy our clients, genuinely holding them as creative, resourceful and whole. We know they have their own answers.

Empowered listening of course extends beyond coaching. It’s a powerful way to connect at any time.

“We have the opportunity many times a day, everyday, to be the one who listens to others, curious rather than certain. But the greatest benefit of all is that listening moves us closer. When we listen with less judgment, we always develop better relationships with each other. It’s not differences that divide us. It’s our judgments about each other that do. Curiosity and good listening bring us back together.”

- Margaret Wheatley
- Turning to One Another: Simple Conversations
to Restore Hope to the Future

The impact of empowered listening on our clients is that they have the rare and cherished experience of being heard; they feel understood and accepted. It is clear that we care about them and this opens space for considerably more depth in their conversations. The person begins to speak from their past experiences, from their present moment experience and from their dreams for the future. They may begin to speak in more depth about things of which they were not previously aware. This unconditional way of listening invites our clients to continue to speak because there is little to resist. As they keep speaking they may become even more powerful in our presence and come to believe and trust that they indeed have their own answers.

Clients will feel safe when they realize that we can be trusted to respect them and see them as whole. Their trust in the connection with us allows for a deepening and strengthening of the coaching alliance. They will begin to connect more and more with their inner strengths and resources. They will connect with the sources of their inspiration, creativity and personal success. This experience can open the door into some insights of their offering to the world: their calling

Empowered listening is nourishing both to your clients and to you. When you are listening to them as being inspired, courageous and creative, then two things happen:

First, the person has an experience of being received in a meaningful way and experiences the power and worth of really being heard.
Secondly, you are receiving something that will have a healthy and positive effect on you. By choosing empowered listening you will be increasing your own joy and feelings of gratitude.

Empowered listening is a choice. Finding inspiration in every moment, in every situation, with anyone, will become a powerful and nourishing habit with practice. It means fully noticing the mind-body-spirit experience of being mutually nourished.