CHAPTER 9

RECEIVE (DON’T JUST LISTEN)

Real listening is a willingness to let the other person change you.

—ALAN ALDA

I FIRST HEARD the word receive used as a form of listening when I watched Julian Treasure’s viral TED Talk, “5 Ways to Listen Better.”¹ His formula for listening is RASA, which stands for receive, appreciate, summarize, and ask. When I deliver one-or two-day Courageous Coaching workshops for leaders, I teach them this formula as a way to use a coaching approach in their leadership conversations. They do exercises to experience what fully receiving and appreciating the talker’s perspective feels like. Most admit they struggled with not jumping in to give advice, but the concept of receiving without judgment and appreciating the person’s experience helped the leaders stay present. Then, adding in the requirement to summarize and ask only clarifying questions forces them to focus their attention on the person they are listening to.

The act of receiving means you take in what clients offer you. You hear their words, notice their shifts in expression and posture, catch the subtle shifts in emotion, and sense when there is something they haven’t said. When you accept and honor people for who they are and what they are experiencing, they are more likely to open up and explore with you.

LISTENING TO

In your daily interactions, the intention behind listening is usually to gain information that will fulfill your needs. You keep your distance from the other person by staying in your head, even when you say your intention is to collaborate. The person feels little connection with you when you part.

You listen to people for these purposes:

1. To collect data. You listen to know what to say or do next. Outside of coaching, you listen to formulate your argument, to compare your perspective to others’, or to refine your own point of view if you feel you are missing something. When coaching, you listen until you feel you have enough information to jump in and explore options.
2. To give an answer or solve a problem. You listen to know what advice to give once others fully share their story.
3. To obey protocol. You listen because it is the right thing to do, generally for the minimal amount of time you think it takes for people to think you care. You listen because you should, not because you want to.

Cognitive Awareness

Listening to people requires you to use cognitive awareness. You seek to understand what people are saying, interpreting what you hear.

You might notice emotional shifts in their expression, but your tendency will be to analyze their reactions, even though it is hard to accurately decipher facial expressions.² Far more is going on in any interaction than what people are saying and perceptibly expressing.

Using only cognitive awareness focuses on collecting data to understand clients’ story from their point of view. Cognitive listening often leads to diagnosing problems to find solutions. The coaching skims the surface in search of options and consequences.

RECEIVING

When you choose to be present and connect with someone, you listen beyond your analytical brain. You open your nervous system to receive with your heart and gut as well as with your open mind. The person feels heard, valued, and possibly transformed as a result.³

Receiving requires you to suspend analysis. You take in and accept people’s words, expressions, and emotions as elements of their experience. You acknowledge the story they offer as valid from their current point of view. You don’t insert your opinions or judgments.

You receive what people offer for these purposes:

1. To connect with the other people. You listen to establish a connection. You stay present throughout the conversation, receiving more than their words and nonverbal gestures. You resist the urge to know what is coming next. Your clients appreciate your ease with not knowing.
2. To let people know you value them. You listen so clients feel heard, understood, and valued. Also, you expand your capacity for empathy when you value what people tell you, even when your perspective differs from theirs.
3. To strengthen your relationship. You listen for the purpose of being with others. We often enjoy friends this way. Can you listen to clients as if they were dear friends?
4. To explore, learn, and grow together. You listen with curiosity to learn from the amazing human in front of you. You enjoy when the conversation takes you somewhere new and unexpected. Connecting with others this way is the same connection you sense when you view an awesome sunset, gaze across a beautiful canyon, or watch a shooting star fall and disappear into the black of night.⁴ Letting go of what you know lets you observe the magic of coaching even while you are coaching.

Receiving is an active, not passive, act. To fully receive, you need to be aware of your sensory reactions as well as your mental activity. With sensory awareness, you can receive and discern what is going on with others beyond the words they speak.

Sensory Awareness

Sensory awareness includes an inward awareness of your reactions in a conversation. Your reactions might be in response to what clients tell you. You also might be reacting to what you energetically receive from them.

You can sense people’s desires, disappointments, needs, frustrations, hopes, and doubts when they can’t or have trouble articulating these experiences themselves. This requires you to access all three processing centers of the nervous system—your brain, heart, and gut. A visualization on how to open all three of these processing centers is presented in the exercise at the end of this chapter.

Being sensitive doesn’t mean being wishy-washy. It means you are aware of what is going on around you on a sensory level. You can sense when people are conflicted, distressed, or stimulated. Most people claim their pets have this uncanny ability to sense their emotional needs. Humans can receive these emotional vibrations as well. We just don’t pay attention to them.

You were likely taught to ignore your sensory awareness as a part of your conditioning as a child. Were you ever told, “You shouldn’t take things so personally” or “You should toughen up”? This led you to rely on your cognitive brain for listening and interpreting meaning.

When you don’t allow people to get under your skin, you aren’t experiencing them fully. You are disconnected internally and externally. You put up a wall between yourself and the people you are with.

I’m often asked if venturing into the land of emotions is risky, especially at work. I hear, “I can’t allow people’s emotions to sway me.” The business world is full of aphorisms that declare, “Only the tough survive.”

You can gain some understanding of what clients are experiencing by noticing their body language and voice, but you gain a deeper awareness when you pick up the emotional energy vibrating between you.⁵ You might feel this energy in your heart or gut. You grasp when clients want you to back off and give them space, quietly standing by. You know when they are impatient to move on or if they want to spend more time on a topic. You can tell when they just want to be heard or if they want to be acknowledged for doing the best they can with what they have right now. You might feel their stress, anxiety, and anger in your body.

If you let these emotions sit in your body, you won’t be able to effectively coach. Empathy is where you receive what another is feeling using sensory awareness, but when coaching, you need to let these sensations pass through you. As described in chapter 4, you can then experience nonreactive empathy. You share what you saw, heard, and felt with your clients. If you felt their emotion, you relax your body and let the emotion subside as you return to being fully present with them.

Practice aligning your brain to stay present with curiosity, care, and the belief in clients’ potential. Receive what they offer without analysis or judgment. Share what you receive. Release the emotions you sensed they felt. Your presence encourages connection, safety, and the openness to discover a new way forward together.

Five Steps for Building Sensory Awareness in Conversation

Practice these steps for keeping your brain clear while coaching. You will be able to clearly receive your clients’ words and expressions and offer them back for their consideration:

1. Be quiet, inside and out. When you quiet your thinking and chattering brain, you clear your sensory channels.
2. Let go of knowing. Instead of thinking you know how your clients will react, try believing anything can happen. You might be surprised. Unfortunately, the better you know someone, the more likely you will quit being curious. Can you release knowing what people will say when you ask them a question?
3. Release the need to be right. Be curious and ask questions to understand your clients’ perspective. After you share what you receive, accept their response. If they disagree, go with their interpretation. They may need time and space to think about what they feel.
4. Listen with your heart and gut as well as your head. Before your conversation, open your heart with feelings of compassion or gratitude. Then, open your gut by feeling your courage. Use the visualization on the next page to help you develop this habit.
5. Test your instinct. When you feel a sensation in your heart or gut, share what you think your clients might be feeling, such as anger, frustration, sadness, or yearning. Accept their response whether they agree with you or not. If you are wrong, your guess could help them name the emotions they are feeling.

A. H. Almaas said, “Therefore, the more accustomed we are to the inner stillness and peacefulness, the more perceptive we become on the subtle dimensions. This can take our inquiry to deeper levels, to a newer kind of knowledge, to a different kind of experience.”⁶

The following visualization exercise will help you open your head, heart, and gut before your next conversation. Pause between the steps.

1. Sit in a chair and become a witness to your body. Soften your gaze and shift it downward. Notice how your body feels. Shift your position to feel comfortable while sitting upright.
2. Feel where your body is making contact with the chair. Feel where you have placed your feet.
3. Notice your emotional state. Do you feel sad? Calm? tired? Impatient? Whatever you feel, see if you can relax and release it so you become open to the process you are about to step into.
4. Focus on your breathing. Feel your body respond as your breath moves in and out. Feel the temperature of the air as you inhale it into your body. Let your body relax as the air flows out. If you notice specific spots of tension relating to your emotions, breathe into these spots. As you breathe out, let the tension flow out of your body.
5. Bring your awareness into your brain. Picture an elevator sitting in the center of your mind. The door is open. Allow your thoughts, judgments, and opinions to float into the empty elevator. When they are safely inside, see the door close, leaving your mind free of thoughts. Say the word “curious” to yourself. Breathe in and feel how curiosity opens your mind.
6. Return to the elevator in your mind. The door is still closed. Watch the elevator float slowly down your body, through your neck, and into your chest, and see it settle in the spot next to your heart. Recall someone or a pet you deeply care about. Or maybe you see a scene that opens your heart. As the elevator door opens, see the person, pet, or place that fills you with gratitude, happiness, or love. Take a deep breath in, and say the word you feel, such as “love,” “happy,” or “grateful.” Feel your heart expand.
7. Return to the elevator next to your heart. Say goodbye to the person, pet, or place as the door closes. See the elevator float slowly down your body, down your center, and come to rest at the spot just below your navel. A warm glow is coming from the elevator door. When the door opens, there is nothing inside but the warm glow. Feel the warmth of this glow. Recall a time you felt gutsy and determined—a time you spoke up or did something despite your fear. Remember how you felt as you took action or spoke your mind. As you inhale, say the word “courage” to yourself. Let the word settle into the center of your body before you exhale. Keep breathing with your mind on your center, your point of strength.
8. Now, open your eyes. Take your open head, heart, and gut with you as you coach or engage in any conversation.

   After your next coaching session, consider if you had a difficult time accessing one part of the nervous system. I’ve heard, “I can do the gut, but listening to my heart feels awkward” and “I am always listening with my heart. Sharing what I sense from my gut feels scary.” People who tend to be helpers listen more easily from their heart than their gut. Risk-takers who move quickly on instinct find it easier to listen from their gut than their heart. In your daily interactions, practice receiving from your most vulnerable place to balance the three large organs of your nervous system. This practice will help you open and align your entire nervous system when coaching.