Our culture is cultivated by the way people interact. If we are not truly, actively listening we have lost an opportunity. If we are not listening and asking questions for clarification and understanding, trust will decrease. Listening is situational and relational, meaning we listen differently in different contexts and scenarios.

Oscar Trimboli sets out how being a more effective listener can help empower people in his whitepaper Deep Impact – listening beyond words.

To find out what your listening blind spots and barriers are, try out the Deep Listening Quiz.

The 125/400 Rule explains why listening deeply and effectively is so difficult, and why you need to reorientate yourself to learn to become a better listener, not speaker. Whilst you can listen at 400 words per minute, you can only speak at between 125-175 words per minute.

In times of uncertainty and continuous change, our ability to uncover answers through inquiry, openness, and exploration can be a powerful tool. Don’t rush to react. Gather information to better analyse and ask considered questions that draw out more information or stretch the other person’s thinking, such as:

• What else could you do?
• If you are saying “yes” to this, what are you saying “no” to?
• What is missing from this picture so far? What is it we are not seeing? 
• What is the real challenge here for you?
• Are there any steps you could take right away that would significantly improve your situation?

To facilitate exploration and help to expand awareness in a coaching conversation, remember to wait, process, and respond thoughtfully.

When issues arise, our first instinct can be to solve the problem ourselves or instruct someone else what to do in a given situation. Although this approach appears to work in the short term, it doesn’t make a meaningful contribution to the development or empowerment of the individual. One of the simplest techniques to shift your mindset to respond instead of react is to slow things down and get used to working with silence. Let go of how you want the conversation to go and trust in the individual’s ability to figure out what to do.

To facilitate a reflective and empowering space in a coaching relationship aim to stay present, stay checked in, breathe and let the moments unfold.

The GROW Model is a simple yet powerful framework for structuring a coaching conversation. The model provides a basic structure for any coaching session, and can be used flexibly to guide the coach and the coachee towards successful decisions, learning and actions.

GROW stands for:

• Goal.
• Reality.
• Options (or Obstacles).
• Will (or Way Forward).

You can find additional examples of coaching questions structured around the GROW model in the resources library.