This was a question once posed to me by my coach, when we were once discussing what it really took to be an effective coach.  I should add that he was NOT asking me this question because he thought I was in any way aligned to Hitler’s views.  In fact, he was asking me this because he knew that I wasn’t and that is actually what made this an interesting topic of conversation.

What was my reaction to this question?  Well, silence to begin with.  This was one of those completely out of the blue intuitive, and provocative, questions that totally took me by surprise.  To this day, I am not sure that I have a complete answer to this question, but I do have some insight, which I would like to share with you.

When I first completed my coach training, and in particular my NLP and Tony Robbins training, I was, I confess, a pretty annoying individual!  I had learned all these amazing tools and techniques for transforming people, and everyone (and I really mean everyone as my poor wife and some of my friends will testify) was subjected to this really irritating person who thought he could fix everyone!  Looking back on this makes me cringe somewhat, but I am nevertheless grateful for this experience, as it taught me a great deal, as all things tend to with the benefit of hindsight.

I wasn’t a totally useless coach.  I helped many people at the time and these tended to be people who were struggling with depression or anxiety issues, some of the things that can be usefully dealt with on some level by NLP.  However, other clients with different issues did not respond so well.  I remember at that time, I would go into a coaching session with a pre-conceived view about how I could turnaround this individual and help them.  I started to get some less than encouraging feedback and this got me curious.  Why wasn’t I helping these individuals?  Some of the feedback centred around my listening skills at the time, and I also received comments from some individuals who wondered who was actually driving the coaching sessions.

So when I spoke to my own coach about this problem, and he asked me this question, I suddenly started to understand what was going on.  I had very strong preconceptions about Adolf Hitler, and if I was to work with him I would, I perceive, have had a huge amount of trouble letting go of these preconceptions to actually serve his needs.  In the same way, the client’s I had trouble with, I had preconceptions that they were somehow ‘faulty’, and how they should be ‘fixed’, and I was merely trying to make them fit into my model of the world, rather than their own.  My ability to assist them was therefore dependant, in large part anyway, on my ability to completely let go of all my preconceptions about these individuals, and simply be there with them.

During many of the workshops that we run at Zoom, we often distinguish between 7 levels of listening:

1. Ignoring - Hearing but not really listening at all.
2. Pretending - Hearing and making encouraging noises- ‘uh huh’ etc.
3. Selective listening - Tuning in to select parts.
4. Gap Searching – Permanently searching for your opportunity to interrupt.
5. Attentive listening - Paying attention and focussing energy on the words that are being said.
6. Empathic listening - Listening with the intent to understand, emotionally and intellectually - getting inside the other person’s frame of reference.
7. Objective 3rd person listening – Listening to another individual from a place of total detachment from our own needs, perspectives and thoughts and also from pre-judging the person we are listening to.

Looking back at my situation I was probably at level 3 or 4, not as bad as it could have been, but certainly not as effective as level 7 at building a useful rapport with someone.  Fortunately for the individuals I was working with, the penny had dropped.  I turned up to their next sessions completely without expectation and allowed myself to move out of my comfort zone into the discomfort of being present and not knowing how I was going to react to what arose.  The feedback started to change, and I started to relax into the realisation that generally speaking no-one is broken and no-one needs fixing, and that we are all just learning and practicing, and we are where we are.

I say generally, because I am not quite sure the same analogy applies to Hitler.  Would I have coached him if given the opportunity?  Perhaps, if in doing so I could have prevented what happened all those years ago.  The problem with that answer is that once again the coaching would have been about me and not him.  And although I generally don’t have a problem in seeing the good in every bad situation that arises, I am not sure I could have lived with myself if through coaching with me, he would have made the choices that he eventually did with the outcomes that occurred.  Here is an individual and a set of circumstances that I can’t help but think needed fixing at the time.  Perhaps the answer, like most things in life, isn’t totally black or white.  I am not sure.  I am nevertheless grateful for being asked the question, because it sparked off a process that enabled me to be of greater service to others.  What do you think?  I would be intrigued to hear your thoughts.  Please make a comment in the box below this article.

In part two of this article I will give my thoughts on listening objectively.  If you haven’t already done so subscribe to our RSS feed to receive notification when the next part of this article is published.