Life coaching principles and practice

Listening is an art and so we have heard. In life coaching, listening is far more important than we might imagine. This is because listening as an art needs to be practiced with greater accuracy and precision in this field as every word spoken gives an insight into client's life, psyche and present state of mind. Listening is more than passive hearing, it also involves action but this action may not actually require words. It is action on another level where the coach senses the world around, the actions of the client, his body language, and his responses and then adjusts his approach accordingly. This is known as Level III listening and is quite different from hard-focused Level II listening. Level II listening is considerably better than level I in the profession of life coaching but Level III is definitely more desirable. However one may need to train himself to listen at Level III. As a life coach, moving from Level II and Level III requires attention to environment and a keen development of empathy and perception. At Level II, coach is focusing on client's words, paying close attention to what he is saying and excluding himself completely from the conversation. But while focusing so hard on the client, he may actually do something wrong i.e. he may eliminate the surroundings too. So while he is paying attention to client's words, he is not measuring the impact on his own words and not picking clues from around the client and this can be disastrous because sensing is missing from the equation of listening. Level III listening is where sensing steps in. The coach is not only listening to the spoken words, he is also subtly sensing the impact of his own words on the client, and picking clues from the environment. That is the main difference between Level II and Level III. At Level III, the coach will look for signs such as body language, unspoken words and facial expressions and the "air." By the air, we mean he gets a feel and sense of the environment to assess how comfortable the client is, whether he trusts him or not, is he willing to share, does he feel the need to open up etc. Thus Level III is a significant improvement over Level II and actually can aid the coach in his profession.