Ask Kevin Kelly.

In his most recent book, Excellent Advice for Living: Wisdom I Wish I’d Known Earlier, Kelly has a great quote about how and why we should listen.

It’s not the conventional idea, as you might have guessed.

• Why do you listen?
  
• How do you listen?
  
• Maybe the best question is this…How do you like to be heard?
  

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[0:13] Hey folks, I am in my backyard again and I’m thinking about a book that I just finished, by Kevin Kelly called Excellent Advice for Living: Wisdom I Wish I’d Known Earlier.

And he had a quote in there which was excellent advice about listening.

And because I’m a coach and think that coaching is awesome and think that more people need to know about the awesomeness of coaching…

I thought I’d share with you this quote and my slight twisting of it in regards to coaching.

So here’s the quote, and I’m going by memory.

The purpose of listening is not to reply, but to hear what is not being said.

I’ll say it again. The purpose of listening is not to reply, but to hear what is not being said.

When I heard that, I thought, oh my gosh, that is so cool.

And I think it can be expanded a bit for coaching. we’re coaching.

[1:34] I found that the main thing is that people know what the solutions to their problems are, they just don’t quite know how to get there.

And so the role of the coach is to help them get there by asking questions and by listening for, what’s not being said.

But not just listening, but asking questions in a way that helps the client see for themselves, and this is critical for coaching, see for themselves what’s not being said.

So to re-phrase that phrase from Kevin Kelly, I’d say the purpose of coaching is not to reply, but to help the client see what’s not being said.

[2:41] I’m evolving that definition. I think it’s a good practice to take anything that you do and to define it.

So that was a new definition for me when I heard Kevin Kelly make that awesome quote.

And I’ll just say that book, which I’ll provide the link in the show notes, the book is amazing.

So many good, short pieces of advice and ideas and just excellent, would make a wonderful gift for a graduate.

[3:17] It is graduate season right now. And so I’m going to buy a few copies for the graduates of my life.

And so, I hope you check it out.

This is David Bourne. You can find the show notes at DavidBourne.com.

I hope to see you there.