I have always considered myself a reasonably good listener.
Or at least, I thought I was.
But coaching is teaching me that there is a difference between hearing someone and really listening.
I’m learning to listen not just to the words, but to what sits around them.
The pause before an answer.
The sentence that gets started and then changed.
The subject someone keeps circling back to.
The sudden shift in energy when they talk about something that matters.
The things they dismiss quickly.
The things they say with certainty; and then quietly question a few minutes later.
But perhaps the biggest lesson is that noticing these things doesn’t mean deciding what they mean.
That is where judgement can so easily creep in.
Instead, I’m learning to observe.
To become curious.
To wonder rather than assume.
There is a subtle but important difference between thinking, “I know what is happening here,” and thinking, “I noticed something. I wonder if there is something here worth exploring?”
The second leaves room for the other person to tell you.
And that room matters.
Because sometimes what we think we are hearing isn’t what the other person is actually saying at all.
Coaching is making me more aware of how often we listen with an agenda.
We listen so we can respond.
We listen so we can give advice.
We listen for the gap in the conversation where we can tell our own story.
We listen through the filter of our own experience.
And sometimes we listen while already deciding what someone means.
I’m learning to be more comfortable with not knowing.
And that lesson has extended beyond coaching.
I’m finding myself listening differently to younger people in my family and in the wider community.
Age vs. Wisdom
There is a tendency, particularly as we get older, to believe that wisdom is something we acquire with time.
And, of course, experience does teach us things.
But age and wisdom are not the same thing.
Some of the younger people I meet are remarkably self-aware. They question things I might once have accepted without much thought. They can articulate their boundaries, emotions and aspirations with a clarity that sometimes surprises me.
They have grown up in a world that is different from the one I knew.
They have different reference points.
Different pressures.
Different possibilities.
And sometimes, different answers.
I don’t want to automatically translate those differences into a lack of experience.
Perhaps instead I should be asking what their experience can teach me.
That, too, is a form of listening.
And perhaps this is one of the unexpected gifts of coaching.
I started learning how to coach because I wanted to help other people think.
But I’m discovering that the practice is also teaching me how to think — and listen — differently myself.
Less certainty.
More curiosity.
Less judgement.
More observation.
And perhaps the question I’m left with is this:
How much might we learn if we stopped listening to confirm what we already believe and became genuinely curious about what someone else might teach us?
Warmly,
Haya