Talk: The Power of Listening
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Speaker:
Claire Ashcroft
Talk description
Title:
The Power of Listening
Short synopsis:
Have you ever thought of listening as a belief? [Building from her session the Power of Questions... see other submission] Claire shares an interesting take on the Power of Listening; a take that challenges the power of questions and emphasises the importance of silence. Inspired by the work of Nancy Kline, this interactive tutorial is designed to give participants an opportunity to experience the power of listening for themselves, leaving them with techniques that they can take away and experiment with in their own coaching conversations.
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Long synopsis (optional):
This session builds from my first talk The Power of Questions, which I've delivered at a few Meetups and Agile conferences. I will be running this session for the first time at Agile in the City: Manchester 2018. It takes 3 more of the fundamentals skills of coaching listening, rapport and intuition (listening in particular), challenges traditional ways of thinking about coaching and introduces some new concepts and ideas that participants can take away and use in their own coaching conversations. 1) Introduce the session and where the idea came from: my passion for coaching, a follow on from Power of Questions and inspiration from Time to Think by Nancy Kline, which I shared at the AITC: Manchester Agile Bookshelf in 2017 as a book that had inspired and had a profound impact on me. 2) Position listening as one of the 5 fundamental skills of coaching: 5 skills - Listening, Questioning, Intuition, Rapport, Feedback. Refer to Julie Starr’s coaching star – point to my previous session (Power of Questions) for questions. Explain that this session will touch on 3 elements of listening, rapport and intuition today. 3) Coach's dilemmas: Exercise: draw coach's dilemmas from the group, bring up some examples (e.g. what question shall I ask next, internal dialogue, polluting someone’s thinking, trusting their intuition etc.). Assert that listening could help with some of these and draw out being distracted by thinking of the next question you are going to ask. 4) What if you didn’t need to ask a question at all? In fact, what if the person you are coaching knew the precise questions they needed to be asked better than you? 5) Link to Agile principles 5. & 11. Around support and trust & self organising teams – give your coachee/s support and trust and they will self organise their own thoughts and insights 6) Introduce the idea of listening as a belief. Listening to a person (or group) with the belief that they are intelligent human beings who can come up with their own best solutions. Listening with rapport, warmth, trust and support, giving the person or group a comfy space to explore their thinking – one of the best gifts you can give in the hectic nature of our day to day lives. Share Nancy Kline quote: “The quality of your attention determines the quality of other people’s thinking” Nancy Kline, Time to Think 7) Let’s give it a try! Exercise I participated in with Kim Morgan, Barefoot Coaching at Agile Derby. Exercise: 1. Self organise into pairs 2. Introduce yourselves to each other and prepare to listen to each other for 5 whole minutes with the belief that your partner can find their own best solutions 3. Decide who will listen first 4. Listener is to simple ask: “What would you like to think about today?” and then listen 5. I’ll time 5 minutes, if your partner goes silent that’s great – some powerful things are likely to be happening. If you feel you need to say something simply ask “what else would you like to think about?”. 8) Debrief, draw experiences of the exercise from the group. Ask people to pop-up (stand up) to share. Share my own experience at Agile Derby. When you become skilled at this it can help attune your intuition, which can help you to hear what is not being said explicitly. You may start to recognise assumptions that are being made that may be limiting the coachee or group. 9) “Limiting assumptions can be removed with an incisive question”, Nancy Kline. Introduce the concept of an incisive question. Exercise: 1) Invite the group to think of a limiting belief that they might hold and write it on an index card 2) Bring some up on a slide to aid thinking (e.g. I’m not good enough, I might fail, they don’t like me, I don’t deserve this) 3) Share the format of an incisive question and ask individuals to write their own 4) In pairs swap cards and ask each other the incisive question that they’ve crafted for themselves 5) Listener remain silent for at least 60 seconds to allow the thought process, count silently from 1-60 10) Debrief, draw experiences of the exercise from the group 11) End on explaining the importance of silence. Explain that holding space for a group or individual to think is one of the greatest gifts you can give. Explain neurologically what is likely to be happening during a coaching a session when there is silence. ‘It would take you 32,000,000 years, so scientists say to count the number of electrical connections that are happening in their wondrous brain during the quiet. And in those connections ideas are forming, insights are melding, most of which you will never hear about’ (Nancy Kline, Time to Think) 12) Invite feedback, questions, comments Close and thank you
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