Master the 6th ICF Core Competency “Listens Actively”
This is the 6th ICF competency out of 8. It is part of the “Communicating Effectively” category of competencies.
ICF competencies 6, 7, and 8 get to the heart of what it means to coach at professional and master levels. Let’s do a deep dive into listens actively, which is a competency that belongs to communicating effectively.
What’s in this guide (Across 9 articles):
- The 5 Guiding principles used to assess your coaching
- ICF Core Competency 1 Demonstrates Ethical Practice
- ICF Core Competency 2 Embodies a Coaching Mindset
- ICF Core Competency 3 Establishes and Maintains Agreements
- ICF Core Competency 4 Cultivates Trust and Safety
- ICF Core Competency 5 Maintains Presence
- ICF Core Competency 6 Listens Actively
- ICF Core Competency 7 Evokes Awareness
- ICF Core Competency 8 Facilitates Client Growth
What’s the definition of “Listens Actively?”
“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.” ICF International Coaching Federation
- Considers the client’s context, identity, environment, experiences, values and beliefs to enhance understanding of the client’s communication.
- Reflects or summarizes what the client communicated to ensure clarity and understanding.
- Recognizes and inquires when there is more to what the client is communicating.
- Notices acknowledges and explores the client’s emotions, energy shifts, non-verbal cues or other behaviours.
- Integrates the client’s words, tone of voice and body language to determine the full meaning of what is being communicated.
- Notices trends in the client’s behaviours and emotions across sessions to discern themes and patterns
If you read all 8 Competencies in detail, you’ll see there are themes that keep showing up, for example, #1 “considers the client’s context, identity, environment, experiences, value” there’s that word again, beliefs, “to enhance the understanding of what the client is communicating.”
It helps to therefore keep a broad apprecate of the client as a whole person to honor this repeating theme. Be mindful of the who of the clients as the ICF calls it instead of only the what.
- The what: is the goals, the action plans.
- The who: is this person, the depth of them, the whole of them.
Give some kind consideration and show that you make space for both inside of your coaching is what’s been hinted at here.
Reflects or summarizes what the client communicated to ensure clarity and understanding.
Reflective listening is a universal communication skill. In all of the reflective listening techniques I have heard used by coaches, consultants, leaders, guides and psychologists, I’ve heard a mix of excellent subtle skills among many outdated habits that tend to clutter coaching.
I’ve settled on what I feel is an easy-to-use method that supports listening actively and many other competencies, which I’ll share with you in a moment.
Recognizes and inquires when there is more to what the client is communicating.
When you hear something in the client’s tone of voice, their hesitancy, in the way the client speaks, that’s an opportunity for you to respond appropriately. Don’t overdo this; if you’re unsure, remember to ask your client. Something like, “I may have noticed some hesitancy in your voice, am I right?”
Notices acknowledges and explores the client’s emotions.
And here’s a really interesting one. You’re being asked to notice energy shifts, non-verbal cues or behaviours. I love adding somatic Intuitive Coaching to the mix, and this is the perfect opportunity to do just that.
When we ask our clients to tap into their felt sense of the process, we invite a much deeper level of coaching.
“Integrates the client’s words, tone of voice and body language to determine the full meaning of what is being communicated” and “Notices trends in the client’s behaviours and emotions across sessions to discern themes and patterns.”
These 2 points are particularly important for PCC, professional coaching and MCC master coaching.
One skill you should develop for all 8 competencies, especially #6, Listens Actively, is “Backtracking.” We make sure that all our master coaches master backtracking.
- So backtracking is listening for those words highlighted by your client’s voice.
- It’s different to summarizing.
- We don’t want to hear too much paraphrasing, which is typical of active listening.
- Please watch out for outdated preambles, like “If I understand you correctly.” And “so if I hear you….”
Backtracking is elegant. It’s simple. It’s simple to weave the essence of your client’s words and metaphors into the conversation. So if your client has used the word inspire, you use the word inspire. You can ask them questions and drop them in as little reflective moments.
If you do want to summarize, because we’re not saying summarizing is a bad thing, none of it’s bad, then use a coaching style, which is to ask permission.
“May I summarize what you’ve just said?”
This way, your client can say, “no thanks”, because summarising takes a lot of time. Some coaches habitually endlessly paraphrase and summarise, which can steal precious time from a session.
Remove silence fillers.
Remove assumptions and silence fillers like “um, okay, great.” Also, watch for the perceptual system being used by your client. If your client is saying, “I see,” “I hear”, or “I feel”, match that in the way you backtrack.
We’re not playing a tennis match here, so don’t be endlessly bouncing back and forward, with question-answer-question-answer. Rather make space for responding to what is being said. Ask permission to explore, and watch for missed opportunities to ask for the meaning of a word.
Don’t overdo any of these.
Offer feedback in a coaching way.
You might reflect that if you notice a significant change in body language tone or some kind of energy shift. And the way that we do that as coaches is we might say, “May I offer an observation?”
“I noticed a change… How does that land for you?”
This way, we offer feedback as a coach.
Somatic coaching of any kind means including the felt sense of the client, noticing feeling as they land in the body. And, of course, it’s important to also remain in coach position, asking mostly spiral-up questions that relate to the future, not the past.
If you’re going to stretch your clients or challenge them somehow, ask permission.
- “May I challenge you here?”
- “May I just question something you’ve said?”
- “May I interrupt you for a moment?” This is if the client seems to be taking up a lot of time sharing a story instead of attending to the very thing that they want coaching
Just two more competencies to go.
