A Time to Think Nancy Kline

Transcipt

I mean that attention from another human being, from one human being to another, is an act of creation. That if I can be profoundly interested in what you think, and what you will think next, and where you will go with your thinking, you will generate ideas and insight and ways forward that you wouldn’t do without this attention.

And I mean that I want to be listening in a way that is more interested in where you’ll go next than I am in what I’m going to say next. So I like to think of it as listening to ignite rather than listening to reply, which I think is a profound difference.

And do you find that, for some coaches, they might think that they’re listening, but actually they’re not listening in the way that you would define listening?

Yes, I do find that. I think that they come into the, um, session with the assumption that they are to listen long enough to get enough to know what to say next, to know what question to ask next that would take this client somewhere that they’ve determined they should go, or could productively go.

And so they listen just that long. And they don’t always literally interrupt, though some do, but they stop listening at the point at which they figured out what some people refer to as the killer question.

And I think we’re even rewarded for coming up with that reply that takes them where we think they should go as quickly as possible. I think some coaching is defined as successful sort of proportionate to how short the time is between when you start to talk and I talk.

•  Listen to Ignite Thinking   Listening is not a passive act - it's a powerful act of creation

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