Levels of Listening

Someone comes to your office with a problem, and thirty seconds in you already know what they should do. From then on you are waiting for a pause so you can say it. You give them the answer, they thank you and leave, and two weeks later you find out the real problem was the part they never got to tell you.

Figure 1. Levels of Listening

What it is

Levels of Listening describes where your attention goes while someone else is talking. The model draws three widening circles. Your attention can sit on yourself, on the speaker, or on the whole situation around the two of you.

The levels give you a way to catch yourself in the middle of a conversation. Once you can tell that you are busy preparing your reply, you can choose to put your attention back on the person in front of you, and then on what is going on around them.

How it works

L1, You

Am I following what they mean, or rehearsing what I want to say?

At L1 your attention is on your own thoughts, your opinions and your next line. You still hear the words, but you run them through your own reaction. When you notice an answer forming before the other person has finished, park it and go back to what they are saying. You can return to your answer later, once you know whether it fits.

L2, Speaker

What is this person trying to tell me?

At L2 your attention is fully on the other person, on their words, their tone and their feeling. Staying quiet does not get you there on its own, because L2 is an active choice. Before you offer any advice, summarize what you think they mean and let them correct you. The correction is often the most useful thing you hear in the whole conversation.

L3, Environment

What is happening around the words?

At L3 your attention widens to the whole situation, including the room, the mood, who has gone quiet and what nobody is saying. Treat a change in tone or participation as something to ask about. Say what you noticed, ask what is behind it, and check your reading with the person before you act on it.

When to reach for it

A one-to-one where someone is struggling and you already know what you think they should do
A meeting where a decision is being argued and you are waiting for your turn to speak
A hard conversation where you notice yourself rehearsing your reply

“I knew that if I led with the feedback we would just fight, so I let him go first.”

A worked example

Cedarline Supply is a fictional building materials distributor. In a weekly one-to-one, its warehouse supervisor told the operations manager that the new evening shift was falling behind on orders.

The supervisor began with the late trucks. Within a minute the manager had decided the shift needed two more people, and then noticed they were rehearsing that answer instead of following the supervisor. That was L1.

The manager set the answer aside and moved to L2. They asked which orders were running late and let the supervisor finish. Then they summarized what they had heard, which was that the late orders were the ones picked in the last hour of the shift. The supervisor corrected one detail and agreed with the rest.

At L3 the manager noticed that the supervisor lowered their voice whenever someone from the day shift walked past the open door. The manager said what they had seen and asked about it. The supervisor explained that the day shift was leaving orders half picked, and that they had not wanted to criticize a colleague.

The problem was the handover, so extra staff would not have fixed it. The two of them agreed to rewrite the handover checklist that week. The manager also agreed to sit in on the next handover and to ask the supervisor a week later whether anything had changed.

Try it this week

Pick a conversation this week where you expect to have a quick answer. By the end you'll have a summary the other person has corrected and agreed, and a next step with an owner and a date.

Before it starts, write down the answer you expect to give, and then set it aside.
While the person talks, check whether you are following them or rehearsing your reply, and go back to them when it is your reply.
If you notice a change in tone or a silence, describe it and ask about it without assigning a motive.
Before you offer your view, summarize the issue and ask what you have missed.
Use their correction to decide what to ask next, then agree the next step, who owns it and by when.
Compare the agreed step with the answer you wrote down at the start.

Try it with AI

Copy this prompt into ChatGPT, Claude or any AI assistant and fill in the part in square brackets. It will walk you through the model one step at a time, using your own situation.

Prompt

I have a conversation coming up where I'm likely to jump in with an answer: [describe the conversation and who it's with].

If you can open links, read https://www.colincox.com/library/levels-of-listening first. It explains the three Levels of Listening, where my attention sits on my own thoughts at L1, on the speaker at L2, and on the whole situation at L3.

Ask me one question at a time and wait for my answers. Find out what answer I already expect to give, what I might be missing, and how I usually behave when I've slipped to L1.

Then help me plan two or three open questions that will keep me at L2, and one thing to watch for at L3. Finish by asking me to write down the answer I expect to give, so I can compare it with what I actually learn once the conversation is over.

Leave out names and anything confidential before you paste in your situation.

From Colin's work

When I was managing a department, a new team moved under me and its team lead became my direct report. Before his first review I gathered feedback. His own team told me they did not really know what he did. His peers called him a black hole. One of his team told me they were embarrassed by how he treated some people who walked into their area. He thought he was the best leader in the company.

He sat down, crossed his arms and told me he hated performance reviews. I knew that if I led with the feedback we would just fight, so I let him go first. I said, "I get it. We gotta do this anyways, so let's just start with your perspective. How's it going?" And I shut up.

For the next fifteen or twenty minutes I stayed in level two listening. Then I played his view back to him, and he agreed with it. He asked, "What about you, Colin? Have you heard anything?"

I shared it, and all the color drained from his face. He said, "Oh my goodness, I had no idea that's how I was perceived." Two hours later he got up and said, "Colin, that's the best feedback I've ever gotten in my life."

Go deeper

Read the longer article on Levels of Listening

Related tools

Source: Co-Active Training Institute, How the Three Levels of Listening Make You a Better Coach

Want help putting this to work with your team? Book a free thirty minutes with Colin.