Deep Listening
Art of Deep Listening
Evoke awareness, cultivate presence, develop trust and intimacy.
What happens in the Deep Listening Process?
Deep Listening softens habitual structures to support cultivating openness for reflective awareness.
White Paper
“All we want is to be heard. With commitment, we become the space where others sort themselves out in language.”
—Tony Zampella
Designer, Deep Listening courses at Bhavana Learning Group
Download our Listening White Paper
Deep Listening Model
Deep Listening begins with a commitment to being with others through focusing attention, developing intention, and cultivating openness.
These FIVE STAGES support cultivating different qualities of awareness to deepen listening.
1. Awareness of Self
Increasing Awareness surfaces the reactive, impulsive self.
Level 1: We care about protecting, so we defend, control, and project.
Focus of Attention: To control events
Listening Dynamic: Win/Lose or avoid losing
Communications: Debate and Defensive
Learning Arc: Discovers reflexive awareness.
2. Deepen/Focus Attention
Cultivating Attention supports focusing on content for responsiveness.
Level 2: We care about accurately discerning evidence to become better at responding, solving, and informing.
Focus of Attention: To respond to events
Listening Dynamic: Right/Accurate or avoid being wrong
Communications: Discuss and Conform
Learning Arc: Recognizes and stabilizes grounded awareness.
3. Develop Intention
Develop Intention to predict action.
Level 3: We leverage knowledge via “critical” awareness to predict and anticipate action better.
Focus of Attention: To predict events
Listening Dynamic: Succeed/Fail or avoid failing
Communications: Conversations for Self-Expression and Negotiation
Learning Arc: Develops critical awareness.
4. Meaning for Context
Cultivate Meaning to support creating context and connecting.
Level 4: We cultivate deeper understanding by opening, appreciating, and empathizing.
Focus of Attention: To frame experiences that connect and develop mutual understanding
Listening Dynamic: Meaningful/Insignificant or avoid being misunderstood.
Communications: Dialogue and Mutual Understanding
Learning Arc: Cultivates a relative-relational awareness that becomes reflective
5. Possibilities to Co-Create
Open Possibilities to co-create.
Level 5: We cultivate openness and relaxed interdependent awareness that finds us receptive, creative, and generating.
Focus of Attention: To create together from the unknown
Listening Dynamic: Whole/Part or avoid binary fragmentation.
Communications: Generate and Co-create
Learning Arc: Develops spacious, interdependent awareness.
Services
For Coaches. We deliver a complete program to groups of ten coaches or more.
For Clients. We deliver a module of learning for each of the five levels via client workshops.
Contact us for information on coaching services or consulting programs to cultivate Deep Listening.
Resources
We offer this material to support your learning and practice.
BLOG – Deep Listening Mindsets Four Part Series
BLOG – Listening as Context and Practice