Are You Listening, Really? 

Today I co-hosted the ANZCAL Coaching Gym, a reflective session for member coaches, with the goal of building the habit of collaborative thinking, of working through the ‘on the business’ matters of running a coaching practice together.

Coaches brought the challenges that are live for them at the moment, the ones causing them to hesitate, potentially to feel overwhelmed, to seek a clarifying or even different perspective.

The tendency in any room is to jump in with solutions and answers. We didn’t. As coaches, we brought our craft: active listening, seeking clarification as necessary, staying curious. That let the coach with the challenge reflect on the shared insights, and determine their own next positive, action-focused step to move through their personal blockage.

The same craft, in the CEO’s chair

Those same steps are how, as business leaders, we come to understand more of our teams, of our clients, and ultimately the success of our businesses.

In our short time together, we identified the need to be clear on individual purpose. To understand the ‘why’ of our clients. The persona of the ideal client. The positioning you present to market. Why it matters to work alongside people who have both the willingness and the desire to see change in their life. How to present offerings in such a way that the value outcomes are seen. And how to treat regulation so that it isn’t a barrier to business but an opportunity to think outside the box.

Read that list again, because every item on it is a question a CEO is carrying too. None of it got answered by someone in the room handing over a solution. It surfaced because the room stayed curious long enough for the person to find their own way to it. This is the same thinking that sits underneath how we approach business growth strategy at Two Tides.

The instinct in any leadership conversation is to supply the answer. Coaches resist it on purpose. They listen actively, seek clarification, and stay curious, which lets the person with the challenge reach their own next step. The same craft, used in a team meeting, is what helps a leader understand their people and grow the business.

What this asks of you

So, as you head into your next team meeting, I encourage you to be curious. To ask questions. To let others contribute. To listen actively, to reflect, to create a space where people can bring their best selves forward.

This is harder than supplying the answer, and slower, and it is the work underneath teams that take ownership rather than wait to be told. Harvard Business Review’s research on why leadership teams fail points to the same thing: the leaders who build capable teams are not the ones with the fastest answers, but the ones who create the conditions for others to reach them. McKinsey’s work on getting both sides of the story finds the parallel risk, that people rarely speak up until the senior leader has, and even then, tend to follow rather than challenge, so the speed and certainty of the person at the top quietly crowds out the collective thinking good decisions actually need.

Listen, and then reflect. What did you notice that you hadn’t noticed before? What alternative perspectives arose for you? Who stayed quiet, who contributed, and what are the learnings in that? What is the one thing you will now choose to do differently?