CHAPTER 7

cultivating a resonant relationship

listen beyond what you hear

Sean Hannigan (not his real name) was a well-regarded, successful executive at a US-based, multinational industrial organization. With twenty-five years of experience under his belt, he was a master at overseeing the technical complexities of the finance functions he led and was rewarded with promotion upon promotion, leading to his role of chief financial officer.

Given his professional success, Sean was surprised at some negative feedback he received from a 360-degree assessment of his emotional and social intelligence competencies, completed by his bosses, peers, and subordinates.¹ The assessment was part of a leadership development program in which he was paired with an executive coach. The coach had already helped Sean to develop his personal vision. Now it was time to review the 360 feedback.

“What’s your reaction to this feedback?” she asked him.

Sean flipped through the pages rapidly and stopped halfway through. He looked at his coach and said, “The feedback was good overall. I was pleasantly surprised by the strengths that others noticed. I’ve heard some of this feedback before, but it’s easy to lose sight of what you do well when you’re in the trenches working through problems, as I tend to do all the time.” She nudged him further to describe his most distinctive strengths, based on the assessment, and how those were visible to others.

After a lengthy discussion about his positive feedback, Sean’s coach asked, “What else?”

Sean looked down at the assessment and said, “It’s pretty clear that my peers and direct reports don’t feel that I listen to them well, or sometimes at all. It’s a definite theme.”

His coach probed, “Do you think it’s valid?” Sean thought for a moment. “Well, it’s hard to deny it when several people commented on it. When I step back and think about it, I can see their point. My schedule is pretty full and I don’t have time to waste on small talk.” Sean and his coach spent more time working through other feedback in the report until they had distilled it down into a personal balance sheet of his assets and liabilities (i.e., strengths and weaknesses).

Then she asked, “What do you feel drawn to work on? Where can you give the greatest amount of energy?” Without missing a beat, Sean responded. “Definitely becoming a better listener. Out of all this feedback, it bothers me the most. But I’m not sure how to improve that exactly.”

Fortunately, Sean’s coach knew how to help him with the changes he wished to make. She had already begun a fundamental step in the process: building a positive coaching relationship. Although Sean had a lot of experience working with others both inside and outside the company, building effective working relationships with his managers or peers, let alone his direct reports, had never been a priority. He tended to view work relationships as the means to achieving a task or as resources needed to complete a project.

Unlike other advisers, like his accountant, lawyer, or physician, Sean’s coach sought to create a trusting, supportive, resonant relationship, the kind we first discussed in chapters 2 and 3. She first built rapport with him by inquiring about his professional and personal journey and being interested to know his story. She also asked about his desired outcomes for their coaching engagement, summarizing those in a document to anchor their process. In subsequent sessions, she prioritized his goals and agenda for their time together and regularly asked what he was taking away from their conversations to help him reflect. And while she asked a number of questions designed to help Sean connect with the best of who he was as a person and a leader, she spent the majority of time actively listening and serving as a mirror back to him of what she heard.

This process enabled Sean’s coach not just to know him but to connect with him on a deeper level. It also helped to create a psychologically safe space where he could think and reflect without the threat of being judged. It’s unlikely that Sean would have been as open and committed to improve his own deficiencies if he’d been reluctant to examine the data honestly with this coach, or if he’d felt threatened or defensive in her presence. Ultimately, what Sean’s coach did was to demonstrate that she cared about him as a person and wanted him to succeed, which in turn allowed trust to take root and blossom in their coaching relationship.

The relationship between a helper of any kind and the individual being helped is the heart of any change process. We will return to Sean’s story later in this chapter as we explore the coaching relationship and some cornerstones for how to build and nurture an effective one. We’ll also look at how the helper’s own internal preparation affects the interaction, and how active listening is key. But first, let’s explore how to develop a resonant relationship with those we strive to coach and help.

what makes a resonant relationship?

Inspiring, meaningful coaching moments and high-quality, trusting coaching relationships don’t just happen. They take intention, preparation, and practice. At its very core, a high-quality relationship between, say, a manager and an employee is shaped by the ongoing interactions and conversations between the two individuals. When you are trying or hoping to help people, your primary role as helper is to facilitate self-directed learning and development for the other person. Effective developmental conversations are shaped by the quality of the discrete connections we form, our ability to listen deeply and remain fully present, as well as the encouragement we extend to inspire the other person to learn, grow, and change through meaningful discussions.

Our Weatherhead colleague John Paul Stephens expanded on work originally done by Jane Dutton and Emily Heaphy to describe a high-quality connection (HQC)—a connection that is a positive, dyadic, short-term interaction. Experiencing an HQC leaves you feeling alive, uplifted, energetic, and genuinely cared for.² Positive regard in the interaction goes both ways, meaning it is mutual. Both parties exchange feelings of compassion rooted in an experience of shared vulnerability and responsiveness to each other. Stephens, Heaphy, and Dutton propose that underlying cognitive, emotional and behavioral mechanisms might explain high-quality connections.

High-quality connections breathe life into both the helper and the individual being helped whenever they meet—and provide the foundation for a longer-term, resonant relationship to grow, just as shared vision, compassion, and energy arouse the PEA and its renewing effects on each person. Positive, life-giving connections are essential to establish trust and convey and experience support. As Dutton and Heaphy explain, even short-term exchanges between people can result in a high-quality connection, which they describe through three structural dimensions: emotional carrying capacity, tensility, and the degree of connectivity.³ Emotional carrying capacity allows a full range of positive and negative emotions to be shared. Tensility refers to the capacity of the connection to adapt and bounce back through various situations and contexts. The degree of connectivity describes the extent to which the connection encourages generativity and openness to new ideas. Dimensions such as emotional carrying capacity have been associated with higher resilience in individuals and their teams. Essentially, sharing more emotions in relationships helps people to be more resilient.⁴

Scholars Kathy Kram and Wendy Murphy suggest that for helping relationships to have transformational impact, the connection needs to be positive and mutually shared. Both the coach or helper and the person being helped have positive mutual regard for each other, share a commitment to their relationship, and benefit equally from their engagement and interactions. Such relationships help foster openness to learning and change. This often sets coaching, mentoring, or even a relationship with a manager apart as a developmental relationship from typical work relationships or even traditional mentoring, where the mentor merely advises the mentee. At its core, such a relationship is a developmental partnership where the primary focus of the experience is to stimulate and support learning. This could be personal, professional, or task-related learning, or some combination of those.⁵

We know from research that individuals are affected by interactions with others through the power of emotional contagion and social mimicry. That’s why the quality of a coaching, managing, or helping relationship is an important consideration. For individuals and teams seeking to change, the relationships form the foundation of support, challenge, learning, and encouragement between individuals.⁶ In our roles as coaches and helpers, it’s important to remember that we have a profound impact on each other’s moods and emotional states, so we need to be mindful of whom we are infecting with our moods and emotions.⁷

In the model of Intentional Change Theory presented in chapter 3, resonant relationships are at the center and affect each of the phases of sustained, desired change and the transitions from one phase to another. Keep in mind that development and change is a nonlinear and uneven process—it evolves for many people as a series of fits and starts. Personal self-awareness doesn’t happen automatically or in a vacuum; otherwise, we would all be highly attuned to our feelings and the reasons behind them. Pressure at work and family demands often work against our best intentions to increase self-awareness and growth. When we are able to sustain the efforts of a growth process, it’s usually because we have support from one, two, or a network of people. As discussed in earlier chapters, we call these resonant relationships because they embody support, security, and safety and infuse us with the energy and motivation to reflect authentically, take initiative, and keep trying.

Let’s return to Sean’s story. One thing his coach did to nurture a resonant relationship was to demonstrate sincere interest in getting to know him. She also expressed a genuine desire to help him. She created an environment where he could reflect openly and honestly without fear of being judged. This provided Sean with a sense of trust and psychological safety. She nudged him to name his core values and strengths aloud and articulate the unique meaning he ascribed to them. As we will examine further in this chapter, those are the type of discussions that foster a shared vision and unleash shared positive energy, connecting the coach, manager, or other helper to the person being helped. Sean could see that his coach appreciated and recognized his positive qualities, giving him a sense of feeling understood and seen as a whole person, with strengths as well as weaknesses and a capacity to elevate his capability and reach success. This element of their relationship was significant in motivating him to take a step forward. If he couldn’t view his capabilities in a holistic way, considering distinctive strengths equally with struggles, he would likely feel either too defensive or too discouraged to work on what he wanted to change, such as improving his listening skills.

In their next session, the coach wanted to get a sense of Sean’s typical day before working with him on a plan to help him become a better listener. She had already learned that his job entailed supporting the CEO in strategically leading the global enterprise by overseeing financial operations across the globe and with his C-suite peers. He had a good rapport with Wall Street analysts and enjoyed preparing for quarterly investor calls. Sean’s team of direct reports included eight heads of finance for the enterprise and the various business units around the world.

“Let’s say I’m one of your direct reports,” the coach began. “Walk me through a typical day and how we interact. Let’s start with the physical space. Tell me about your office. What do I see?”

Sean proceeded, “I have a desk facing the window with two computers on it, one for internal company business and another to follow stock activity. There’s another desk in front facing the door and my chair sits in between. When I’m in the office, I spend most of my time looking at these screens.”

“So, with your back to the door?” the coach inquired.

“Pretty much.”

“Ok,” she said. “So let’s say that I come to talk with you, either planned or unplanned. What happens then?” Sean described scenarios where a direct report or peer would stand in the doorway while he remained glued to the two screens, with his back to them. He explained that he detested “meetings for the sake of meetings,” so he kept conversations short and sweet. He also didn’t like to micromanage, so unless there was an important update or a problem that someone needed help in solving, he didn’t see much need to meet, and he kept those discussions to ten or fifteen minutes, often while the person remained standing.

In the 360 feedback, Sean’s staff and peers reported feeling as if he didn’t have time for them and didn’t care to listen to what they had to say. Now, in the conversation with his coach, it was dawning on Sean that the quality of the relationship he had with others was functional and purely focused on a task or problem solving. Confronted with that realization, he looked at his coach and said, “No wonder people don’t feel like I listen to them! They must think I’m a jerk!” His coach didn’t agree with his entire self-assessment, but she did agree with one thing. Most of the time, he paid more attention to the problem or task and not the person—and this was an obstacle for his ability to lead the team effectively.

Over the following months, Sean experimented with new behaviors to adjust the ways in which he interacted with his direct reports and peers. His goal was to build a better working relationship with others. This included getting out from behind his desk and away from the flashing computer screens, which were a major distraction. Sean began by meeting with people in a conference room and later at a small table in his office. He scheduled monthly meetings with his direct reports, with no agenda. They could use the time in whatever way they wanted. His job was to ask a few questions and mostly listen. He was intentional about finding a place to meet with minimal distractions. It felt strange at first, and he battled thoughts that it was a colossal waste of time. But then, in a matter of months, Sean noticed that people were more open with him and shared more information. He knew more about the people around him in terms of what they had going on at work and even outside of work, and he felt more connected to them.

Sean’s story illustrates how sometimes the smallest steps—in this case, getting out from behind his desk, being genuinely interested in engaging with people, and actively listening to people—can lead to the biggest outcomes. That’s because behavior change is fundamentally about changing our thoughts and habits one step at a time.

But Sean’s story is also about a resonant coaching relationship and what a coach can do to develop one. Along with colleagues from the Coaching Research Lab at Case Western Reserve University, we have collectively studied quality within relationships in various contexts over the past twelve years. We define a quality relationship along three dimensions: the degree of shared vision, shared compassion, and shared relational energy—much like what we described in the coaching relationship with Sean. We’ve seen how those three elements repeatedly have a strong, positive impact on a host of leadership and organizational outcomes such as engagement, effectiveness, and well-being.⁸

In the same way as an individual embarking on change is aided by a personal vision to sustain the change she hopes to make, a shared vision between a coach and coachee helps to create a bigger, hope-filled image of the future. A sense of purpose replaces goals and tasks as the reason for their interactions. Whether the relationship is between a manager and subordinate, teacher and student, doctor and patient, or spouses, having a shared sense of purpose feels bigger than a task of managing time better, trying to exercise more, or planning a family vacation. When two or more people create a shared vision, they resonate by connecting deeply. Their conversations feel more meaningful beyond just accomplishing short-term goals. They seem to move in sync with one another.

The foundation for a true partnership emerges from a shared commitment—at both rational and emotional levels—to each other and what’s possible, not just to an exchange of ideas. While shared vision spreads the feeling of hope and purpose, shared compassion spreads the feeling of caring. It involves the kind of mutual caring and trust that leaves both parties feeling appreciated and cared for. Mutual or shared compassion (i.e., caring for each other as people, not just their roles) is the glue that keeps helpers and the people they help closely connected to one another. By facilitating hope, optimism, mindfulness, caring, and playfulness in the relationship, individuals activate the PEA in themselves as well as those they seek to inspire and help, unleashing health benefits and other advantages, as discussed in chapter 3.

Beyond shared vision and shared compassion, other researchers offer additional considerations around what elements of coaching relationships are notable and relevant. Scholars at the University of Akron suggest that high-quality coaching relationships are characterized by four dimensions: genuineness of the relationship; effective communication; comfort with the relationship; and the extent to which the collaboration facilitates development.²⁰ Another team of researchers studied coaching relationships in a military service academy and found rapport, trust, and commitment to be important.²¹ (For key caveats to keep in mind when developing a coaching relationship, see the sidebar “The Ethics of Coaching.”)

the coaching mindset

As a coach, your frame of mind is as important as the skills you bring to the coaching conversation. When you’re feeling internally off-balance, you are unlikely to make much progress in a coaching situation. Preparation and readiness are everything, as is practice. Throughout this book we’ve discussed how coaching comes in many different forms—and one key way that many of us have “coached” others is as parents, particularly around transitions in our children’s lives. Consider the following story from Ellen, one of this book’s authors, about her efforts to coach her daughter around making choices about her future.

One fall evening in Maureen’s senior year of high school, Ellen arrived home late from a full day of teaching to find her husband putting dinner on the table. What a relief! It had been a long day and she remembered that the refrigerator was empty since she hadn’t made it to the grocery store, so this was a welcome gift. She’d also fought rush-hour traffic and highway construction to attend an information meeting at Maureen’s school about applying for and paying for college.

Throughout the meeting, as the school counselors presented a barrage of details, Ellen felt her stress level rising. “When did the college application process become so complex?” she wondered. She also found herself daydreaming about how simple life had seemed when Maureen was a child. “Wasn’t it just yesterday that I attended the parent meeting for kindergarten?” Where did the time go?” The counselors reviewed important steps that the students needed to follow—everything from registering for the last round of standardized tests to finalizing the list of schools to apply to and writing application essays. Ellen left the meeting with three pages of notes and a headache.

Hungry and whipped from the day, she sat down at the dinner table with family. Ellen was anxious to talk with Maureen and share what she’d learned at the parent meeting. She asked her with genuine curiosity, “Do you have new thoughts about the schools you want to apply to?”

“Yeah, I think so,” Maureen responded flatly. “But I’d like to check out a few more schools.” This was a surprise to Ellen. They’d already spent the summer visiting several colleges, and Maureen had compiled a list of five to seven colleges she was interested in. Sitting at the kitchen table, Ellen could feel her own anxiety, which had begun at the parent meeting, rising. Still, she reminded herself that her daughter probably was feeling overwhelmed by the choices she needed to make.

Ellen decided to pursue another line of questioning. As gently as she could, she asked, “How are your essays coming along?” College admission counselors all offered the same advice: as soon as the applications open, start drafting your essays—and don’t wait until the last minute. For reasons that Ellen couldn’t figure out, Maureen, who was a strong student, had procrastinated all summer and seemed reluctant to get started on her essays. It was like she was paralyzed to engage in the process.

“I haven’t started them yet,” Maureen responded, looking annoyed. “We’re going to work on them in English class next week.”

Suddenly, it was as though a switch went off in Ellen. The full impact of her own feelings of being overwhelmed and fatigued suddenly took over, and she responded angrily, “What in the world is the problem? You’ve had all summer. It’s time to stop stalling and start writing!”

Then, silence. Maureen glared out the window. Immediately, Ellen regretted what she said and felt remorseful. Clearly that interaction hadn’t gone so well. She wanted to be helpful but had failed. She knew that she’d just lost one chance, at least, of making a positive connection with her daughter and actually encouraging her to start on her essays. By allowing herself to get frustrated by Maureen’s response, she stopped listening and being empathetic.

Later, Ellen reflected on what she could have done differently. Most importantly, she would have taken stock of her emotional and physical state before attempting to enter into such a potentially charged conversation. Had she been more self-aware, she would have realized she was tired and not in a good place to coach or even fully listen. Then, perhaps on another day when both she and Maureen were more relaxed, she could try again. This time, she’d remember her own teenage years and try to be more empathetic to the pressure on her daughter to figure out her life. She would try to walk alongside her, so to speak, rather than sit across from Maureen and ask more questions anchored in the positive emotional attractor. For example, questions such as “What are you excited to learn, try, and accomplish at college?” or “What subjects in school do you enjoy so much that you can’t wait for the next class?” That might help open up Maureen to her possibilities and personal vision—as opposed to firing guilt-inducing questions at her, which had only triggered stress and anxiety and shut her down more.

As Ellen’s parenting story illustrates all too clearly, the frame of mind and emotional state of anyone who tries to help another is fundamental to how the conversation will unfold. Next we share some basic guidelines for ensuring more mindful coaching interactions.

cornerstones of coaching

We offer three cornerstones to help you approach coaching interactions with a mindset for building and nurturing a quality coaching relationship. First, believe that individual change is a process, not an event. Growth and development take time. In pursuit of new habits, it takes practice and feedback to grow one’s openness, awareness, and energy to think and behave differently. This is just as true for the helper as it is for the person seeking to change or on the receiving end of help. We all need to allow ourselves room to make mistakes and to grow and improve. The process doesn’t happen overnight, although we often forget this under time pressures and daily stress.

For example, Ellen’s efforts to coach her daughter about her future didn’t begin just that evening at the dinner table. Ellen had been helping Maureen for the past year to consider careers and colleges that could be a good fit for her. So the process of trying to help Maureen to discern what she wanted to do and explore the right college for her was unfolding over time. But in that particular moment at dinner, Ellen slipped into negativity and expected immediate answers, which never works when we’re trying to genuinely help. Fortunately, she and her daughter already had a lifetime of building a bond, and Ellen knew she would be able to work with her daughter once she had replenished her own inner resources and equilibrium.

Second, consider your approach to coaching as a chance to mine for gold, not dig for dirt. A story appeared in the Houston Business Journal years ago that’s become a favorite in our coach education and certification programs.²² In the late nineteenth century, Andrew Carnegie was one of the wealthiest individuals in America. A poor immigrant from Scotland, he worked many jobs as a young man, eventually becoming the leader of the largest steel manufacturer in the country. At one point, Carnegie had many millionaires working for him, which was quite rare for the times. A reporter curious to understand his secrets interviewed Carnegie, inquiring how it was possible to have paid that much money to so many people. Carnegie shared that people are developed the same way that gold is mined. “Several tons of dirt must be moved to get an ounce of gold, but you don’t go into the mine looking for dirt. You go into the mine looking for gold.” Excellent coaches approach coaching conversations looking for the gold in the other person or group. This is common sense but uncommon practice—and even with the best of intentions, the best coaches can miss this golden opportunity. As in Ellen’s story with her daughter, by getting emotionally charged, she missed an important opportunity to help Maureen connect with her strengths and see her own unique gifts and instead shut down any dialogue, at least temporarily.

Third, consider that the agenda for the conversation should come from the person being coached. This means that, although the coach is the keeper of the overall process, the fundamental reason for the process is to help the other person—not for the coach to share his advice or experience. So, keep the agenda flexible and meet others wherever they are. As keepers of the process, it’s important to know the end goal and stay true to it but allow the individual to have a say and choice in how you use your time together more often than not. As illustrated in Ellen’s story, one pitfall was that she drove the agenda for the conversation with her daughter rather than inviting Maureen to talk, and because she’d failed to check her own energy, she was unable to respond as empathetically as she would have liked.

Apart from those three basic guidelines, the most important ingredient for establishing a high-quality coaching relationship is being fully present and being mindful of yourself as well as the other person. Even the most experienced coaches have to work at it every time they coach. One crucial element for nurturing trust and demonstrating support is to pay close attention, deeply and actively listening to the other person. We’ll explore this further in the next section.

listen beyond what you hear

Recall Sean’s story and how, after a lengthy discussion about his positive feedback, Sean’s coach asked a crucial question: “What else?”

Sean was able then to admit to the negative feedback he’d also read and how it was bugging him. “What else?” (also “Tell me more”) is one of our favorite questions, one that we always encourage our students to include in their coaching conversations. The question itself has an inviting effect because it communicates an interest in other people’s thoughts-beneath-their-thoughts. It also conveys an openness to hear whatever it is that the individual might be reluctant to say. Often the question elicits revelations that might surprise even the responder.

Recall for a moment a time when you held someone else’s attention, when you knew the person was completely focused on what you were saying and intent on understanding your idea or feeling. If you are like most people, it felt great! You felt respected, cared for, even loved. You felt special. At a basic human level, we all want to be understood and appreciated and when we take the time to listen to another person, we demonstrate that we care and value what they have to say.

Listening is key to helping us resonate with others around us. It allows people to trust and feel trusted in return. By feeling safe psychologically and emotionally, listening encourages the other person to feel safe psychologically and emotionally, and therefore be open to new ideas and experiences. But in the workplace, the importance of deep listening is often trumped by the pressure to perform and demonstrate expertise.

To listen is to hear with thoughtful attention.²³ Active listening is giving your full attention to the other person and listening with all of your senses. Your intention in active listening is to fully understand the other person’s idea or message and demonstrate respect for their point of view, even if you disagree with it. Through your words and nonverbal cues, you should strive to convey that you may or may not agree with the other person, but first that you want to understand their thoughts and feelings and that you accept and respect what they have to say.

Most of us struggle when it comes to listening. We interrupt people. We finish the other person’s sentences. We evaluate what they are saying. Within thirty seconds, the judge within us not only decides that we know what the other person is thinking, feeling, and about to say, but often, we can’t resist the urge to tell him in the form of a suggestion, advice, or a command.

In a pivotal article published in 1952 in Harvard Business Review, Carl Rogers and F. J. Roethlisberger, professors at Harvard Business School, suggested that the urge to quickly evaluate what we hear is automatic and instinctive. It creates a barrier to listening, open communication, and learning. When we hear a statement made by someone, we immediately have a tendency to agree or disagree and have a reaction not just to what the person said, but also to our own thoughts in response. When deep feelings arise within the conversation, our reaction takes on a degree of emotional intensity. Dialogue shuts down as tempers and tensions rise, stalling any hope of learning or understanding.²⁴

In coaching, further breakdowns in listening can occur—paradoxically because of the fundamental job of the coach, which is to exercise self-awareness and emotional self-control, especially when listening. But this can be a double-edged sword. Such self-control isn’t easy and can actually activate the NEA in the coach as he actively resists the urge to speak!

It’s true that the best coaches are great listeners. But as humans, we are all easily distracted. We get caught up in our own thoughts and while we think that we are actively listening to others, we often are anticipating what we have to say next. The extent of our ability and interest to listen is surface-level. We are listening to the conversation playing out inside our mind, not being fully present to listen to the other person.

Active listening takes a good deal of intention, effort, and energy. It starts with a deep and genuine self-awareness of who we are and what we bring to the coaching interaction. It includes being aware of our biases. In the words of gestalt psychotherapist Robert Lee, “Our assumptions and stereotypes create filters for how we hear people. We don’t hear others from the place of who they are. We hear them through the filter of who we think they are. So, being aware of our implicit biases is essential to keep us honest and enable us to be open to listen fully to what the person in front of us, on the computer screen or on the phone has to say.”²⁵

Deep listening continues with being aware of the other person. Listening with all of our senses means that we hear, see, and feel what the other person shares, shows, and experiences. We hear words and are attentive to emotional and nonverbal cues. We dial in to language, facial expression, and tone. We see eyes light up, the furrowed brow, and the fidgeting in the chair. We hear changes in voice, pace of speech, and breath—all in service of seeking to understand and maintain a safe, supportive space for the person to reflect and learn.

In helping relationships, one internal resource that coaches and helpers rely on to be tuned into another individual is empathy. Empathy represents our ability to put ourselves in the shoes of another person (or group) and imagine what the individual is seeing, thinking, and feeling as if we were that individual while realizing that we are not. Our colleague Helen Riess, from the Harvard Medical School, suggests that we are hardwired to be empathetic through mirror neurons, which are specialized brain cells in the premotor cortex. She explains, “Before their discovery, scientists generally believed that our brains used logical thought processes to interpret and predict other people’s actions. We now believe these neurological ‘mirrors’ and shared circuits give us the ability to understand not just what another is thinking but to feel what they are feeling as well.” These specialized neurons allow us to connect cognitively with others, forming the basis of what Reiss calls shared mind intelligence—literally being in the same cognitive wavelength as another person.²⁶

Empathy has three different facets—cognitive, emotional, and behavioral—that contribute to strengthening our bond or connection in our helping relationships.²⁷ Cognitive empathy involves conceptually understanding the perspective of another person and draws on the neural networks that involve analytical processing. It engages the analytical network as we focus our attention on collecting information to form a holistic picture of the person or situation and work to learn and absorb her perspective. Emotional empathy is the ability to be emotionally in tune with another person and feel what she feels. For example, this could be the excitement you feel when your coworker gets that promotion she’s worked hard for or the sadness and heaviness you feel when your best friend’s mother dies after an unexpected illness. Emotional empathy activates regions of our emotional brain center, or empathic network. We have an easier time accessing emotional empathy when we see ourselves as similar to another person (e.g., you grew up in the same hometown, played the same varsity sport in high school, share the same religious or political views). It’s often not as immediate or instinctive when the differences between two people are great.

Behavioral empathy is the third facet of empathy. It is also known as empathic concern, as it is the motivation to respond to help another person in some way. It is when our thinking and feeling are integrated and propel us to want to do something. You demonstrate empathic concern when you feel that inner tug in your heart that requires you to act to help another person.

Depending on the unique disposition of the coach, an individual may respond differently to the range of emotional expressions that the coach might use. Being emotionally attuned creates an emotional connection, while an analytical approach may give the individual a sense that the coach is more interested in solving the perceived problem. There’s no one best way. In reality, to truly help others, we need to utilize all forms of empathy: the ability to attune ourselves to others, the desire to understand others, and the willingness to be an active participant who helps others on their journey of development and change.

But for those of us who struggle to listen well, there is hope! Listening is an art and a skill that can be developed. Henry Kimsey-House and Karen Kimsey-House, along with colleagues Phillip Sandahl and Laura Whitworth, suggest that there are three levels of listening, through which connecting and coaching relationships take shape:²⁸

• Level 1 listening, also known as the connection level, involves listening to others and deciding what their words mean to us personally. The listener emphasizes an inward focus; listening at this level is useful to establish common ground in conversations by connecting on a personal level with the other person.
• Level 2 listening is referred to as the focused level. This level involves giving full attention to the other person and demonstrating empathy and intuition to deeply understand and connect with those with whom we interact.
• Level 3 listening is the global level and involves listening with all of our senses and beyond just the words. While continuing to give full attention to the other person, we give a bigger context to what we hear and consider the broader environment and what is not being said in addition to what is being shared.

Listening at level 1 allows us to connect with other people. This is the listening that happens all the time in the workplace, when we meet someone at a networking event, or are in a team meeting together. One person talks about his weekend at his lake house. You just spent a weekend away renting a house on the same lake and you end up trading stories about favorite restaurants in the area. This is significant because connecting with others forms the basis for our professional and personal relationships. But to coach effectively, we need to go past just connecting to listen at levels 2 and 3. In order to establish a high-quality relationship and be truly helpful, we need to lean in and listen with all of our senses.

We offer two other simple tips to help you stay attentive and listen at your best. Remember the 80-20 rule. As a coach, manager, or other helper, aim to speak only 20 percent of the time, allowing the individual you’re helping to speak 80 percent. This helps to reinforce that the focus is on the individual. Another favorite is the acronym WAIT, which stands for “Why am I talking?” If you find yourself taking up a lot of airspace, you’re not coaching; you’re either telling your own story or teaching or managing or directing. By remembering W-A-I-T, you can keep yourself on track. If you catch yourself talking too much, use a question to shift the focus away from you and your story and back to the person you are coaching.

We hope that you’ve found meaningful content and practical tips in this chapter to help you in your efforts to build and nurture high-quality helping relationships. In chapter 8, we’ll explore how organizations strive to build a culture of coaching through a variety of approaches including peer coaching, managerial coaching, and using external coaches.

key learning points

1. The relationship between a coach and coachee or helper and person being helped is the heart of any developmental relationship. The relationship needs to be resonant to be high quality, which means it is characterized by an overall positive emotional tone, a shared vision, and shared compassion.
2. When striving to coach or help others to change, approach the relationship with a coaching mindset. Change is a process, not an event, and it takes time. Believe that gold exists within every person and your main job is to help move tons of dirt to find the treasure. Stay focused on the other person, not on the process or the problem. Let the person drive the agenda more often than you do.
3. Deep, active listening on the part of the coach is fundamental and essential to build high-quality helping relationships.

reflection and application exercises

1. Over the course of the next week or so, notice the conversations you have with others. Note if and how other people listen to you, and how you listen to them. Note any patterns that emerge in these conversations with regard to how each person listens to each other.
2. During your ride to work (not recommended if you are the person driving) or some other moment of downtime early in your day, reflect on earlier interactions you had that morning with your spouse, partner, children, parents, or roommates. What did you talk about? How well did you listen? Did you hear what they were saying and how they felt about it?
3. Focus on one conversation at work each day, whether in a group meeting or a one-on-one conversation. Then talk to the person afterward and tell them what you heard and felt they were trying to communicate. Check to see if that is what they meant.

conversation guide

1. In your study group or among a group of colleagues, discuss observations that you had from a shared meeting. Did you observe people in the meeting who seemed to be actively listening and attentive to others? Did you observe people in the same meeting who seemed to be distracted or not attentive to others for whatever reason? What bearing did your observations have on the productivity of the meeting? How about on the relationships between people?
2. Thinking about the same meeting as the above activity, were there some people who seemed to be lecturing or talking at others rather than with them? What is it about these people’s behavior or relationships with others that stands out? When you compare these individuals with those in the same meeting who were attentive and listening to others, what were the differences in how these two people were behaving?
3. Discuss the last time you were in a conversation (possibly with a spouse, partner, or coworker) when you felt the other person seemed to be paying attention but did not seem to be really listening. How did that make you feel?