The Neuroscience Supporting ICF Core Competency #6, “Listens Actively”
Listening is the engine of coaching. Without attuned listening, coaches limit what clients can share or uncover about themselves and the systems in which they operate. With it, clients encounter an expanded state of self-awareness, perspective, and possibility.
This article in our series on the neuroscience behind the ICF core competencies focuses on ICF #6, Listens Actively. We will first introduce how listening has been a cornerstone for positive behavioral changes and overview how listening intersects with every other ICF competency. We will then offer a core concept that directly links listening to client awareness. The contrast between listening in a Red Zone state vs. a Blue Zone state is introduced, along with several neuroscience concepts that influence listening. We will conclude with practical tips that enhance a neuro-informed approach to listening actively.
Listening: Essential to Change & Present Across All Competencies
Active listening has long been an essential skill in both therapy and coaching, and is an influential component of healthy relationships in work, home, and social settings. Research in psychotherapy settings shows active listening to be associated with positive behavioral changes.
Although this article focuses on ICF Competency 6, Listens Actively, it is obvious that listening comes into play throughout all of the ICF core competencies. For example:
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- Ethics (ICF #1): Sensitivity to the clients’ identity, environment, experiences, values, and beliefs (core tenets of coaching ethics) cannot occur without active listening.
- Mindset (ICF #2): The depth of our own developmental journey impacts the breadth of what we can listen to, take in, and hold space for when coaching clients.
- Agreements (ICF #3): Listening holistically ensures that each session addresses relevant challenges and aligns with meaningful goals for the client.
- Trust and Safety (ICF #4): The coach’s depth of listening subtly communicates to clients whether they are safe to express vulnerable aspects of themselves.
- Presence (ICF #5): The coach’s ability to listen to client emotions, uncertainties, or distress influences whether coaching will be a restrictive or transformative space for the client.
- Awareness (ICF #7): The coach’s depth of listening shapes questions, responses, and observations that will limit or expand client awareness.
- Growth (ICF #8): The coach uses listening to invite exploration and application of client learning and growth.
Listening envelopes the client throughout their coaching journey.
Holistic Listening: Gateway to Awareness
ICF Core Competency #6, Listens Actively, is defined as:
Focuses on what the client is and is not saying to fully understand what is being communicated in the context of the client systems and to support client self-expression.
Why is listening so important? It is the precursor to client self-expression, which sets off a chain of client insight, self-awareness, and growth. As coaches, we can leverage the following core concept for listening:
Listening to the
WHOLE person is the
gateway to client awareness
Holistic listening involves listening to both the individuality of the client, as well as the influences of systems on the client (family systems, significant relationships, community values, work environments, cultural traditions, etc.). The coach’s capacity to hear these multiple influences ushers the client into a more expansive space to explore factors that lead to new awareness. (Look for the next article in this series—Neuroscience of ICF #7, Evokes Awareness—for specific neuroscience principles that impact awareness.)
Listening: Red Zone vs. Blue Zone
Listening will vary depending on the coach’s biological state of Red Zone or Blue Zone.
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- Red Zone Listening: Coaching in a Red Zone state inhibits active listening, which can contract client expression and awareness. The biology of the Red Zone causes contraction of perspective, which narrows our thinking and can cause us to negatively interpret situations as a threat to our reputation or wellbeing. We are likely to become defensive or avoidant in thought, feeling, and actions. We listen to be right versus listen to learn, or we listen to give advice versus to engage and partner. Defensiveness can also cause us to judge our client or to judge ourselves (e.g., “what on earth is my client thinking—that idea will never work!” or “I should not have asked that question—that was stupid of me!”). When we shift towards making judgments, the space we create for the client becomes less safe, whether overtly or subconsciously, lessening the client’s sense of safety and likely triggering their Red Zone reaction.
- Blue Zone Listening: Coaching in a Blue Zone state helps us stay client-focused and curious about the many factors influencing clients’ thoughts, emotions, and actions. The biology of Blue Zone helps the coach listen with empathy and compassion, which is a calming influence for clients who are experiencing a dysregulated (Red Zone) state. This co-regulating process between coach and client supports clients to take the sting out of their negative experiences, giving them greater awareness for new perspectives, choice, and action. If the client is already in a Blue Zone state, the coach’s ability to listen in the Blue Zone will support the client to stay in flow and generate even greater creative awareness.
There are complex neural mechanisms underlying active listening, outlined below.
The Neuro Nuggets of Listening
Listening activates a variety of brain regions, impacting interactions between the listener (coach) and listenee (client):
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- Listening supports coach comprehension
- Coach comprehension eases client self-expression
- Listening activates the brain’s reward system within the client, shifting emotions and thinking
- Silence supports Blue Zone brain waves
Listening Supports Coach Comprehension
Active listening boosts the coach’s comprehension via activation of mirror neurons and the brain’s mentalizing system. These systems within the brain influence our ability to perceive what is being spoken and why it is being shared. Neural synchrony, or brain coupling, also occurs, wherein brain activity between individuals synchronizes over time, playing a role in interpersonal dynamics and shared experiences. The more extensive the coupling between a speaker’s brain responses and a listener’s anticipatory brain responses, the better the comprehension.
Comprehension Eases Client Self-Expression
As listening boosts coach comprehension, the coach can respond clearly and succinctly, using language the client is familiar and comfortable with. This makes it easier for the client to process what is being said. This concept was discovered via MIT neuroscientists who found that when participants encounter sentences with unconventional grammar or unexpected terms, the brain has greater difficulty processing and making sense, requiring additional brainpower on the part of the client to interpret meaning and delaying potential insights.
Listening Activates the Brain’s Reward System, Shifting Emotions & Thinking
Through a variety of brain scanning methods, active listening has been shown to influence co-regulation and ease negative emotions, as well as activate the brain’s reward system of the person being listened to, helping to improve positive reappraisal (reframing) of the listened-to experiences. With the expectation of physical or social rewards, the brain releases positive neurochemicals like dopamine and oxytocin, neurochemicals associated with positive emotions.
Positive emotions broaden thinking and possibilities for action. Positive emotion researcher Barbara Fredrickson notes that instead of solving problems of immediate survival, positive emotions equip leaders with states of mind and modes of behavior that indirectly prepare them for future challenges.
Silence Supports Blue Zone Brain Waves
Silence encountered through meditative practices can increase theta and gamma brain waves associated with creativity, learning, memory, attention, and problem-solving while decreasing beta waves linked to stress and anxiety. Inner silence enhances activity of the vagus nerve that reduces sympathetic nervous system activity (the Red Zone) and physiological stress. Although the use of silence in coaching is not as extended as that encountered through meditation, the power of the coach’s silence can be leveraged to support brain waves associated with Blue Zone states.
Practical Applications for Neuro-informed Listening
Consider the following coaching tips and techniques to give your listening a neuro-boost:
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- Listen into the clients’ pauses, non-verbal expressions, emotions, and hesitations, all of which can be just as, or more important, than the words they share.
- Pay particular attention to metaphors and symbolic language clients bring as potential carriers of meaning and emotion.
- Become “bilingual” with the client’s lexicon, using their keywords, phrases, and metaphors to ease the client’s neural processing. For example, if a client says “I need to prioritize my day better,” respond with “How will you know you’ve prioritized your day better?” as opposed to “So how would you time-block your calendar?”
- Establish agreements with the client around allowing and leveraging silence. Use silence liberally.
Practice challenging yourself to expand your listening a bit farther and deeper. What might the client be saying about themself? What might the client be saying about their systems? What is coming up as you listen—are you in the Red Zone or the Blue Zone? Notice how your state impacts your ability to listen deeply to the client, and how freely they share.
As you listen actively to the client’s WHOLE self and systems, you open the gateway to the client expanding their awareness. Our next article will dovetail with the neuroscience we have looked at here as we expand the neuroscience of ICF #7, Evokes Awareness.
Susan Britton, MCC, is Founder/President and Jessica Burdett, PCC, is Director of Coaching Education at The Academies. Since 2001, The Academies has provided coaching education globally, and for nearly 10 years, has been a leader at the intersection of coaching and neuroscience. Curious about “Changing Minds, for Good?” Learn about our ICF Level 1 and Level 2 programs that weave neuroscience findings into accessible, memorable, and transformational coaching skills.
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