Listening: A Working Definition

Chris Dyson 2025/01/23

Within coaching, listening, alongside questioning, is a fundamental skill for the listener / coach. Information is communicated across many channels in addition to the spoken word. Effective coaching will require attention to be paid to all these channels. This makes listening both a broadly based and a demanding, skilled activity.

Executive coaching takes place within a context involving high-functioning individuals. Channels to which the listener must pay attention include all the five senses but this is not sufficient given the sensitivity, complexity and subtlety of messaging that can exist within executive coaching. We also communicate information through body language, and we might receive it ‘intuitively’.

As coaches and mentors, and as individuals in society, we require well developed emotional intelligence skills to ‘listen’ and attend to all the channels, including intuition and non-verbal communications. Within the executive coaching context, a working definition of emotionally intelligent listening emerges.

Listening is

the purposeful sensing

of information-sharing

within oneself

and to and from others.

Exploring and interpreting this working definition in the executive coaching context highlights the following comments and guidance:

Purposeful:

The listener actively gives attention to the listening process
The listening process has purpose
The listening process has a beneficiary – the speaker or the coachee / mentee
Participants seek to understand the meaning being communicated
Participants are engaging and acting to support the continuing process

Sensing:

Recognising when information is being communicated
Hearing and seeing, receiving using all the senses
Using ‘intuition’, including wisdom, learning and experience

Information-sharing:

Information is communicated verbally and non-verbally
Information passes between participants in a complex flow
Multiple channels and sources of information will be in use

Within oneself:

Participants practice self-awareness and self-management
Participants should be ‘sensing’ their own intra-personal responses through intuition, reflection and self-awareness

To and from others:

Participants practice social-awareness and relationship management skills
Participants are aware of hearing, seeing and sensing verbal and non-verbal inter-personal information flows