How To Listen As A Thought Partner
Whether you are a professional thought partner who coaches individuals and groups or a person who finds themself partnering with others by happy accident, listening is the most important part of being a thought partner. In fact, I would argue that it’s the most important skill a person can build.
Listening as a thought partner goes far beyond silently waiting for your turn to talk. Unlike so much of what passes for listening in everyday conversation, listening as a thought partner involves letting go of your need to argue, correct, insist, or defend your own ideas.
Instead, being a thought partner is the practice of creating the mental and social space where your partner (who I’ll call the Thinker) can explore ideas in a trustworthy manner. Those ideas may not be fully formed, may need to be delicately considered, may need to be followed down an uncertain path, or may need to be deeply interrogated. The exact nature of the partnering is revealed by deep listening.
What does it mean to explore thoughts in a trustworthy manner? Here are the first three practices a “Thought Partner” engages when creating trustworthy mental and social space for the “Thinker:”
1) No fixing or uninvited advice.
A Thought Partner’s task is to accompany the Thinker as they do the work of reflecting on a subject of interest or concern. The hope is that the Thinker will arrive at greater clarity and meaning by making sense of the subject for themselves. The Thought Partner is an aid in that work, but must not make the process about themselves.
Sometimes it is tempting as a Thought Partner to try and persuade, advise, or even fix the Thinker because we believe we see the subject with clarity. While it can be acceptable to offer advice if requested by the Thinker, the better practice is to allow the Thinker to arrive at their own conclusions. The way to invite such an outcome is by utilizing question-posing.
2) Ask simple, open-ended questions.
A Thought Partner’s best tool is a question; specifically one that is simple and open-ended. A simple question is one that does not require a lot of explanation and back-story. Sometimes we as listeners in everyday life share in a conversation by telling a story in order to ask a question. This can be helpful, but usually it takes the focus off of the Thinker and places it on ourselves. We think we’re relating, but often we’re inserting our own meaning and experience into that of our partner. A Thought Partner’s job is not to teach or persuade, it is to help the Thinker learn their own lessons by making space for their own sense-making.
Open-ended questions help this, too. An open-ended question is one that does not direct the Thinker toward one answer or another. For instance, rather than ask a Thinker, “Does this opportunity scare you?”, an open question would ask “How does this opportunity make you feel?” In the first example the question suggests a specific emotion which can subtly suggest to the Thinker that such a feeling is particularly important when in fact the Thinker might not be feeling scared at all. In contrast, the second example invites consideration of emotions without inserting yourself into the reflection.
3) Allow for silence.
Finally, a Thought Partner should resist temptation to fill silence. In dominant Western cultures especially, we tend to see silence as an invitation to speak. Many of us find silence uncomfortable and impulsively look for ways to end it by getting up to leave or speaking. But the “margins” of a conversation are as important as the “text” because they allow thoughts to arrive, turn, evolve, or sink in. Filling that silence not only potentially robs the Thinker of time to process, but also communicates to the Thinker that they need to attend to your needs rather than their own.
Whether you are sitting with a friend, facilitating a learning space, consulting with an organization, or even engaging with a stranger, these practices are invaluable to communicating the worth and importance of the people with whom we engage. Those feelings go a long way in creating real empowerment. Developing these capacities is a worthwhile endeavor.
How are you at listening with these skills? Are there ways you make listening about you rather than your partner? How does it feel for you when someone listens in this way?
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