SuperVision Stories #8

Supervision and coaching are privileged relational spaces for the work of active listening.

What is active listening (skill 6)?

In the terms of the ANC, active listening is listening on two levels: containing and containing. With other models of human understanding, listening focuses both on the story that is told, the situation that is reported, and on the mechanisms underlying the story and how it is staged in the narrative. With possibly the recurrences that the coach notices in his client.

It is active in the sense that the coach, or the supervisor, reformulates what he has understood – which is only his vision of reality – and questions the rest. And listening is also active in the sense that the coach or supervisor works with signals, emotional, energy field, silences … Signals from its interlocutors and internal signals from its own antennas.
The ability of the coach to confront his client while remaining naive – or in the non-knowing, non-judgment – is key in this active listening. And since it is a question of confronting, it also refers to the relational contract (competence 3), which has made it possible to clarify the relational style that explicitly suits the client or the supervised. Or the ability to raise awareness (skill 7).